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Six days after she gave birth to her first baby, Salma Radi* was forced to evacuate her home in northern Gaza to flee Israel‘s relentless bombing and seek refuge in the central Gaza Strip, where she and her husband are now staying in a small apartment with 43 other people.

Displaced, scared, and in bad health, Radi is struggling to take care of the baby, Omar, she had following two IVF attempts.

“I was still bleeding badly after having given birth when we had to evacuate our home, leaving everything behind. I carried my son and one bag and ran with my husband in the dark for around one hour until we found a taxi,” Radi, 28, told Middle East Eye.

Before dawn, at 4am, that day, the couple had received a recorded phone message from the Israeli military, ordering them to evacuate ahead of imminent bombing on Gaza City.

“We started running around the house not knowing what to do. We took our official papers and money and left everything else behind – the piles of canned food we had bought at the beginning of the war, our clothes, the beautiful bedroom and the things we had bought for Omar over the past year,” Radi said.

Radi had not brought milk for her son since she was still nursing. But a few days after they were displaced, her son stopped breastfeeding.

“He started crying hysterically whenever I tried to breastfeed him. He spat out the milk and refused to have it. He remained about a whole day without food. I didn’t know what to do or why he was refusing to breastfeed,” she said.

After many phone-call attempts on the severely damaged communication networks, Radi finally managed to reach her doctor. She was told that anxiety and fear change the taste and texture of breast milk, and that is why her baby has been refusing it.

“I also do not eat well, and thus cannot produce enough milk. Honestly, in the past years, I was yearning to have a child. I cried and prayed day and night so that God would grant me a baby. But now I regret all of it,” she said.

“I regret having a baby, and I feel guilty for bringing him to this world where he is already suffering and will continue to suffer for the rest of his life as long as he is Palestinian.

“I do not say this to my husband, but I truly regret all the days when I prayed to have a child.”

No Safe Road Home

When Israel launched its war on the Gaza Strip in response to the Hamas attack on 7 October, Radi’s husband, Mahmoud, rushed to the supermarket to stock up on food, bread, drinking water and medicine. But when they had to flee their home, they did not manage to take any of it with them.

Today, Radi and her husband are unable to go back home to get the much-needed food they had bought, after Israel cut off the northern Gaza Strip and Gaza City from the central and southern areas by bombing the roads linking them.

“The only way left for us to go home now is al-Rasheed Street, on the coastal road, but whoever drives there gets targeted by Israeli gunboats and tanks,” she said.

On Friday, Israeli forces targeted a group of internally displaced persons who were driving on al-Rasheed Street on their way to the southern Gaza Strip, which the Israeli military had warned people to move to for their “safety”.

At least eight people, including children, were killed.

A few hours later, a group of ambulances transferring a number of wounded people to the Rafah border in the south were also targeted on the same street, although the Palestinian health ministry had coordinated with the Red Cross before transferring them.

An ambulance driver was wounded, and the ambulances returned to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

At least 9,448 people have been killed, including 3,900 children and 2,500 women, since Israel started its most aggressive bombing campaign in Gaza on 7 October, when Hamas fighters launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israeli towns.

‘Our Worst Nightmare’

With Israel cutting off water and food supplies to Gaza, owners of grocery markets say they will not be able to restock the emptying shelves until Israel lifts its siege of the already-blockaded enclave.

In Nusairat refugee camp, one of the most densely populated areas in the central Gaza Strip, tens of thousands of residents have sought refuge from the bombing in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip.

With few markets and bakeries still open, residents and displaced people struggle to get food and bread.

“With around 44 people, half of them children, staying together in one house, we need food and running water all the time. Children finish their breakfast and 30 minutes later they start asking for lunch or a snack because they do not get enough food in each meal,” Radi said.

She added that the children, who usually need one load of bread for breakfast, now only get a quarter of that and a few pieces of cucumber.

“In order to get a bag of bread, we have to wake up at dawn and walk for around 60 minutes to reach the only bakery that still has not been bombed in our area,” she said.

“We wait in a queue where hundreds of people, who had come from all districts around the Strip, stand, and after around two or three hours we finally get one bag of bread.”

Due to the lack of flour, water, and fuel needed to run the machines and bake the bread, bakery owners now sell each person only one bag of bread to cover the needs of as many families as possible.

Families that need more than one bag have to send several members to stand in the queue outside the bakery and buy one bag each.

“Of course, we do not cook because we do not have cooking gas and enough water and vegetables. So we mainly rely on canned food. But canned food needs a lot of bread, so we are always in an endless dilemma thinking what to eat and what to feed the children,” Radi said.

“And of course, because there is no water, we are bathing the children with wet wipes only. They are starting to have allergies and skin infections due to the lack of sanitary conditions.

“Every day we say this will end soon, but it only gets worse. Every day we say they will not target places around us, but they are bombing more homes in our neighbourhood.

“We did not expect to live this in our worst nightmares.”

*The name has been changed upon request.

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Analysis with foresight by Peter Koenig, first published on May 20, 2021

***

“I said we would exact a very heavy price from Hamas and other terror groups, and we are doing so and will continue to do so with great force,” Netanyahu said in a fiery video address.

Israel’s PM Netanyahu is a war criminal and should be held accountable for war crimes throughout his PM-ship of Israel, according to the 1945 / 1946 Nuremberg trials criteria. His crimes against humanity, against a defenseless Palestine are comparable to the Holocaust.

In 2016 Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu had been indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The trial is ongoing but has temporarily been “suspended”. Netanyahu has dismissed the charges as hypocritical and acts as if they didn’t exist. Even though he lacks the majority to form a government, he acts with impunity, because he can – he can because he has the backing of the United States.

More importantly, Israel has been accused before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for crimes against humanity and war crimes against Palestine.

The prosecutor of the ICC, Ms. Fatou Bensouda, said on 3 March 2021 that she has launched an investigation into alleged crimes in the Palestinian territories. She added the probe will look into “crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court that are alleged to have been committed” since June 13, 2014, and that the investigation will be conducted “independently, impartially and objectively, without fear or favor.”

In a quick response, PM Netanyahu accused the Court of hypocrisy and anti-Semitism. Of course, the quickest and often most effective defense and counter-attack is calling any accusation, no matter how rightful it is, as anti-Semitism. Calling someone an anti-Semite shuts most people up, no matter whether the accusation is true or false. That explains in part why nobody dares to even come forward with the truth about crimes committed by Israel.

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Imagine, Jews were the chief victims of the German Third Reich – a Nazi Regime, and today the political leaders of Israel,  many of whom are descendants of the Jews, persecuted and slaughtered in Nazi-concentration camps, have allowed the transformation of Israel into a Zionist Fourth Reich, executing Palestinians Holocaust-style. They have done this with impunity for the last 73 years, with the current massacres reaching unheard-of proportions.

Pro-Palestine protests take place around the world – and especially now, finally, throughout Europe. Workers and young people joined protests across Europe on Saturday, 15 May, including in London, Paris, Berlin and Madrid, to oppose Israel’s bombardment of the Palestinian population in Gaza. The demonstrations coincided with the Palestinian Nakba(Catastrophe Day, 14 May 1948)—marking the founding of the state of Israel, through the forced expulsion of 760,000 Palestinians from their villages.

Here is what one protester, Khalid, in Manchester, UK, had to say. Khalid held a placard reading “Lift the siege of Palestine-Stop bombing Palestine”. He said,

“Israel should know better. They know how it feels to be exterminated. They had no homeland and came to Palestine as guests and now they have taken the Palestinians’ homes and are trying to throw them out. The Palestinians have no water, they have no food. You have got people like [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson and presidents colluding with Israel and giving them money to destroy human life” – (See this)

Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, always take place with the unwavering support of the United States. No US presidential candidate has a chance of being “elected” to the empire’s highest chair, the Presidency, without having proven his or her unquestioned support for Zionist-Israel. Without that western support, Israel’s war against and oppression of Palestine would soon be over.

Palestine could start breathing again and become a free country, an autonomous, sovereign, self-sustained country, what they were before the forced UN Partition Plan for Palestine, and as was foreseen by UN Resolution 181 II of 1947. This genocidal conflict situation has lasted almost three quarters of a century – and has little chance to abate under the current geopolitical constellation of the Middle East and the world, where obedient submission to US-Israeli command and atrocities is the name of the game.

Background

The conflict started basically with the creation of Israel. The UK, since the end of WWI and the Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, occupier of the Palestine Peninsula (Palestine and Transjordan, see map), proposed to the UN as a condition for UK withdrawal, the creation of Israel in the western part of what was then known as Palestine and Transjordan. The so-called UN Partitian Plan for Palestine, was voted on 29 November 1947 by the UN General Assembly, as Resolution 181 (II). The then 57 UN members voted 33 (72%) for, 13 against the resolution, with 10 abstentions, and one absent. The Palestinian Authority was never consulted on this proposal. Therefore, for many scholars the UN Partition Plan’s legality remains questionable.

The Plan sought to resolve the conflicting objectives and claims of two competing movements, Palestinian nationalism and Jewish nationalism, or Zionism. The Plan also called for an Economic Union between the proposed two states, and for the protection of religious and minority rights.

However, immediately after adoption of the Resolution by the General Assembly, a civil war broke out and the plan was not implemented. The remnants of this civil war, the non-acceptance by Palestine of this UN Resolution 181, for which the historic owners of the land were not consulted, are lingering on as of this day.

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After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the British administration was formalized by the League of Nations under the Palestine Mandate in 1923, as part of the Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. The Mandate reaffirmed the 1917 British commitment to the Balfour Declaration, for the establishment in Palestine of a “National Home” for the Jewish people, with the prerogative to carry it out.

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War, announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The question is still asked today: How legitimate was that declaration in terms of international law? Many academics see this declaration still today as a unilateral move and a breach of international law, as no consultation of the Palestine Authority ever took place.

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In the November 1947 UN General Assembly vote, the US was among the 33 countries voting FOR the Partition Plan. Interestingly, though, President Truman later noted,

“The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but that the White House, too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders—actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats—disturbed and annoyed me.”

This Zionist pressure was to set the bar for what was to follow – up to this day.

David Ben-Gurion, Zionist statesman and political leader, was the first Prime Minister ( 1948–53, 1955–63) and defense minister (1948–53; 1955–63) of Israel. In a letter to his son in October 1937, Ben-Gurion explained that partition would be a first step to “possession of the land as a whole” (emphasis added by author).

As of today, seventy-three years later and counting, the conflict is not resolved. To the contrary. It has become the longest lasting war, or aggression rather, in recent human history. A war it isn’t really, because a sheer oppression and literal slaughter against a perceived enemy, like Palestine that has no weapons to speak of, being bombarded and shot with the most sophisticated US-sponsored weapons systems, cannot be called a war. It is sheer genocide. The Palestinian weapons of choice are mostly rocks; rocks thrown by Palestinians at the Israeli IDF invaders, who then mow them down with machine guns, mostly civilians, women and children.

The Israel armed-to-the-teeth Defense Forces (IDF), invade Gaza and Palestinian West Bank areas with the most sophisticated machine guns, bombs, white phosphorus, practicing indiscriminate killing. The IDF destroys Palestinian living quarters, administration buildings, schools, shops, the little manufacturing industries that makes up their economy – destroying a people already teetering at the edge of extreme poverty and despair. No mercy. What does one call people who are committing such unspeakable crimes?

What does one call this style of aggression? – Literally killing hundreds, thousands of people without defense, in the world’s largest open prison – Gaza – home to more than 2 million people, living in misery, housing and infrastructure constantly destroyed, painfully partially rebuilt – just to be destroyed and bombed to pieces again. Those who don’t die from Israeli direct aggressions, may die from the indirect effects – famine, misery, disease and suicide – of this constant, abject hostility perpetuated upon what was supposed to be, according to the UN Partition Plan, an autonomous Palestine home of the Palestine people.

It is an ongoing – seemingly never-ending conflict, ever since the first Intifada beginning in December 1987 (Intifada in the context of the Israeli-Palestine conflict is a concerted Palestinian attempt to shake off Israeli power and gain independence).

The Oslo Accords I and II are a pair of agreements between the Government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), of 1993 and 1995, respectively, sponsored by Norway in an attempt to achieve peace between the two parties. The Oslo Accords failed bitterly, over the issue of Jerusalem that was to become the religious capital for both countries, but Israel refused, claiming Jerusalem as her own, making the holy city to Israel’s capital. The first foreign leader recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, was US President Donald Trump on 6 December 2017.

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There was, however, another, less talked-about but equally important issue – an issue of survival – within the Oslo Accords: The fair sharing of the water resources. Israel never agreed, as about 85% of all water resources of what used to be the Palestinian Land, falls currently within the borders of what was defined by the Partitian Plan as Palestine. This is based on a World Bank study, in which I participated. On the insistence of Israel, the US vetoed publication of the study. Hence, the report was never officially published and publicly available.

Subsequent, so-called Peace processes, mostly US-sponsored, failed as of this day, because both Israel and the US have no interest in finding a peaceful solution. Neither one of the two nations have an interest in a Peace Accord, as the US needs the conflict to keep control over the Middle East, while Israel has no intentions to give up (slave)-control over Palestine, as her wellbeing depends on the overall control of what used to be Arab-Palestinian territory, and especially Palestine’s water resources. Without them, Israel would be a dry and unproductive desert.

There is a purpose behind these illegal, but ever-growing number of Israeli settlements on Palestine territories: Control over water. The settlements are usually over or near underground water resources. This is one way of controlling Palestine’s water. This happens not only in the so-called West Bank, but also in Gaza, where water resources are really scarce. Gaza is the world’s per capita water-scarcest area. The few Gaza water tables are super-posed by Israeli settlements.

This totally illegal and often UN-condemned Israeli Settlements strategy – also totally ignored by Israel – gradually reduces Palestine land and increases Israel’s control over crucial Palestinian water resources. See map.

The impediment of being able to manage their own water resources, therefore increasing their food self-sufficiency through their own agriculture, makes out of Palestine an Israeli slave-state.

In addition, Israel has a handle on opening or closing the Gaza border, letting at will minimal food, medication and other life-essentials into Gaza, as well as allowing exactly the number needed of low-paid Palestinians (literally slave-labor) cross the border in the morning to work in Israel, and having to return at night to their Palestine homes. It is sheer Apartheid exploitation. Furthermore, Israel does not recognize Gaza’s territorial Mediterranean waters which would be a means towards Palestinians self-sustention and economic industrial activity.

According to an OECD report of 2016, Israel ranks as the nation with the highest poverty rate among OECD countries, i.e. 21% of Israelis are living under the poverty line. This is more than Mexico, Turkey and Chile. The OECD average is about 11%. This figure (21%) may be slightly exaggerated, given the relatively large informal sector and transfer payments to Israel from Jews abroad, as well as from international Jewish organizations.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Israel is economically not autonomous and needs Palestine to survive, both in terms of confiscated Palestinian water resources, as well as Palestinian slave labor. Therefore, there is hardly any hope for the UN-planned two-state solution to eventually materialize. There is little hope that this situation will change under the current geopolitical conditions. The US wants to dominate the Middle East and needs Israel as a garrison state that will be armed to the teeth for the US – to eventually grow and become Washington’s proxy ruler of the Middle East.

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A question that is rarely asked, if ever: What is Hamas’ role in this never-ending Israeli-Palestine conflict? Since 2007 Hamas is officially governing the 2-million-plus population of the 363 square kilometer Gaza Strip. Hamas is also the Palestine paramilitary or defense organization. Hamas is said to be funded largely by Iran. Is it true? And if so, is Iran the only funder of Hamas?

It is odd, however, that ever so often, Hamas attacks Israel by launching unsophisticated rockets at Israeli cities, rockets that most often are intercepted by the IDF defense system, or cause minimal damage. But they cause, predictably minimal damageagainst an IDF which is US-equipped with the latest technology weapons- and defense systems.

Yet, a Hamas attack on Israel prompts regularly a ferocious retaliation; bombardments, not so much aiming at Hamas, as Netanyahu intimidates, “We would exact a very heavy price from Hamas and other terror groups…” , but at the civilian populations. The heaviest casualties are civilian Gaza citizens, many women and children among them, after an Israeli “self-defense” retaliation. This is of course no self-defense. The Hamas attacks usually follows an Israeli provocation.

Why would Hamas hit back, knowing that they won’t wreak any damage on Israel, yet they will trigger each time a deadly massacre on the Gaza population? – At the outset, Israeli provocations look like “false flags”. Could they be false flags with the willing participation of Hamas? If so, with whom does Hamas collaborate?

These are questions which certainly do not have an immediate answer. But the 14-year pattern of repeatedly similar events begs the question – is there another (Hamas) agenda behind what meets the eye?

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What is nearly as criminal as the IDF’s aggressions, is the almost complete silence of the west, and the world at large, vis-à-vis Israel’s atrocities committed on the Palestinian population. It is an unspoken tolerance for the carnages Israel inflicts on Palestine, especially in the Gaza Strip, the world’s largest open-air prison.

For example, the political UN body, despite hundreds of Resolutions, condemning and flagging Israel’s illegal actions against Palestine, including the ever-increasing number of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestine territories, seems to be hapless against Israel. Weak condemnations of Israel, calling both parties to reason – leaves Israel totally cold and undisturbed. There is no punishment whatsoever, not from the UN system, not from the western allies, most of whom are Washington and NATO vassals.

The Biden Administration has taken the usual imperialist position of cynical neutrality, like it was an uninvolved disinterested player, while painting up Israel as being some kind of victim instead of the brutal Zionist apartheid state that it is. It is important to remember that the creation of Israel was so that the US had a garrison state to protect her interests in the Middle East.

Take the UN Secretary General. Instead of condemning Israeli ruthlessness and demanding accountability, the spokesman for UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, merely called on the Netanyahu regime to “exercise maximum restraint and respect the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.”

The Secretary General himself reiterates his commitment, including through the Middle East Quartet, “to supporting Palestinians and Israelis to resolve the conflict on the basis of relevant United Nations resolutions, international law and bilateral agreements.”The Quartet, set up in 2002, consists of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia. Its mandate is to help mediate Middle East peace. As of this day they have not achieved any tangible results.

Because they do NOT WANT to achieve any peace. For the reasons mentioned before, Peace is not in the interest of Israel, nor in the interest of the West, led by the United States. To keep the conflict burning, sacrificing hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of Palestinian lives is not important. It’s just a collateral damage of a larger agenda – control over the Middle East and her riches, a step towards controlling the entire world.

Time and again, Guterres disgraced himself and the office he holds by failing to denounce US/NATO/Israeli aggression and demand accountability for high crimes too serious to ignore.

If the UN is incapable or unwilling of assuming the responsibility of reigning in Israel, perhaps the Group of 77 (by now more than 120 UN member countries) should take a joint stand, exerting pressure on Israel, asking as an intermediary for outright negotiating with Israel and Palestine to reach a sustainable peace settlement, including the original two-state solution, back to the pre-1967 Israeli-Palestine borders. Let us, the UN, become pro-active in seeking and finding a permanent solution for the stressed-to-death, starving and tortured Palestinians, especially those from the Gaza Strip.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he has worked for over 30 years on water and environment around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and  co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020)

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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

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***

After 120 members of the 193 members of the UN General Assembly called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Israel demonstrated its increasing isolation by declaring the UN illegitimate and irrelevant.

Both the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly continue to grapple with the Israel/Hamas War, also known as the Gaza War, with the Security Council deadlocked and the General Assembly demanding an immediate ceasefire.

On Tuesday, October 25, Russia, Sudan, and Venezuela introduced a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. The US introduced a competing resolution which called for humanitarian pauses to let aid into Gaza, but not for a ceasefire.

The Russian resolution failed because it did not win the two-thirds majority required to pass, and the US resolution failed because Russia and China, both of which have veto power on the Council, voted against it, as did the United Arab Emirates.

After the US resolution failed, China explained that it had voted against it because it considered it a green light to Israel. This is an English translation:

“The draft resolution is evasive on the most urgent issue of ending the fighting. And it has never been able to call for an immediate ceasefire in clear and unambiguous terms. At this moment, ceasefire is not only a diplomatic term, it means the life and death of many civilians. If a resolution from the Security Council is ambiguous on the issue of war and peace, it’s irresponsible, and it’s also extremely dangerous. It is tantamount to paving the way for large-scale military action and giving the green light to further escalation of the war.”

China also objected that the US resolution denied Israel’s longstanding occupation of Palestine, and that it:

  • did NOT condemn the indiscriminate and asymmetrical use of force,
  • did NOT call for a full, independent investigation of the bombing of the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza,
  • did NOT call on Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza, and
  • did NOT call on Israel to rescind its order to Northern Gazans to evacuate to Southern Gaza.

Does Palestine Have a Right to Defend Itself?

The week before these two resolutions were considered, the US vetoed a Brazilian resolution calling for humanitarian pauses—even though it condemned Hamas—because it did not assert Israel’s right to defend itself.

In its own failed resolution, the US “reaffirms the inherent right of all States to individual and collective self defense,” and the US and its vassals constantly reiterate that Israel therefore has the right to defend itself. They don’t add that Palestine is not a UN member state, that it’s simply a “non-member observer state,” so the UN Charter doesn’t clearly guarantee Palestine’s right to defend itself. That is the implication, but it wouldn’t sound good if spoken out loud.

UN General Assembly Votes for an Immediate Ceasefire

On Friday, October 27, the U.N. General Assembly reconvened the “Tenth Emergency Special Session on Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory” that was first convened in 1997. “Emergency sessions” are convened when the Security Council deadlocks on matters of international peace and security, with one or more of the five permanent members exercising their veto power. UN member states can then ask the General Assembly President to convene or reconvene emergency sessions to make recommendations for collective action.

In other words, they can let the Security Council know what the rest of the world thinks, and in this case the rest of the world’s representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. The vote was 120 votes in favor, 14 against, with 45 abstaining.

The resolution, introduced by Jordan speaking for the Arab Group, blamed neither Israel nor Hamas for starting the current conflict in the interest of winning broad support. It was co-sponsored by 40 nations, including 27 of the world’s 50 majority Muslim nations. All except Russia were from the Global South:

Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Comoros, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Djibouti, Egypt, El Salvador, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Türkiye, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), Yemen, Zimbabwe and [the non-member] State of Palestine.

Canada introduced this amendment that blamed Hamas:

“[This resolution] unequivocally rejects and condemns the terrorist attacks by Hamas that took place in Israel starting on 7 October 2023 and the taking of hostages, demands the safety, well-being and humane treatment of the hostages in compliance with international law, and calls for their immediate and unconditional release.”

The Canadian amendment was voted down with 85 in favor, 55 against, and 23 abstaining. Before the vote on the amendment, Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram eloquently explained his opposition to wide applause.

After the ceasefire resolution passed, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan confirmed Israel’s increasing isolation by delivering a tirade, claiming that “the UN no longer has even an ounce of legitimacy or relevance.”

Erdan nevertheless reappeared when the UN Security Council reconvened on October 30 but still failed to take decisive action, despite urgent pleas from humanitarian agencies UNICEF, UNRWA, and OCHA. This time Erdan and the rest of the Israeli delegation pinned yellow Stars of David to their sleeves and swore to wear them until the Security Council condemned “Hamas Nazis.”

On October 31, the UN General Assembly reconvened its emergency session where, with no end in sight, member states renewed their call for an immediate ceasefire.

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Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at ann(at)anngarrison.com. Please help to support her work on Patreon.

Featured image is from BAR

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***

More than 40 per cent of Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet has been funded by pro-Israel groups, a new report revealed today.

According to an investigation by Declassified UK, 13 of the 31 members of Labour’s shadow cabinet have received donations from a prominent pro-Israel lobby group or individual funder.

Donations have been received by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, and shadow international development minister Lisa Nandy.

More than half of the cabinet are listed as supporters or officers of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI).

According to Declassified UK, the donations were provided by LFI and Sir Trevor Chinn, a “philanthropist” active in numerous pro-Israel organisations such as the Joint Israel Appeal.

Sir Trevor donated £50,000 to Sir Keir’s 2020 leadership bid, and a total of £200,000 to the shadow cabinet.

While LFI does not publicly reveal its funders, a 2017 Al Jazeera documentary exposed its close ties to the Israeli embassy. It is known for taking MPs on “fact-finding” trips to Israel.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves received some £17,000 to travel to the country.

Declassified UK noted that only four of the 79 MPs who are listed as LFI supporters have signed an Early Day Motion (EDM) calling for “an immediate de-escalation and cessation of hostilities.”

No members of the shadow cabinet signed the motion.

In June, it was also revealed that Gary Lubner, a South African auto glass tycoon and supporter of the United Jewish Israel Appeal, donated £5 million to the party.

Since October 7, Sir Keir has opposed a ceasefire to Israel’s relentless bombing of Palestine, even going as far as to suggest that Israel “has the right” to withhold power and water from Gaza before rowing back on his comments nine days later. The move has sparked a wave of resignations from Labour councillors.

Andrew Feinstein, director of Shadow World Investigations, accused Sir Keir of undermining his own constituents.

He said:

“The reality is that politicians are first and foremost, not going to represent the people who elect them, and in my case, this includes Keir Starmer, who’s my local MP.

“But they represent the people who are funding them.”

On Sir Keir’s refusal to back a ceasefire, Mr Feinstein said:

“It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if that was because he realises that his key funders demand that he provide unqualified and uncritical support to Israel.

“What we’re seeing is that Starmer is a politician who can be bought.”

*

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Featured image: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, with Angela Rayner (left) and Rachel Reeves, arriving with his shadow cabinet in central London for their first meeting. Picture date: Tuesday September 5, 2023. (Source: Morning Star)

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Human rights defenders on Tuesday renewed calls for the U.S. government to end American complicity in Israel’s “horrific war crimes” after the publication of videos purportedly recorded and shared by Israeli soldiers showing the torture and dehumanization of Palestinian men, some of them naked, in the illegally occupied West Bank.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to ISM:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

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

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***

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

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

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

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

A Palestinian youth backflips onto a beach somewhere in Gaza as the sun sets.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A white dress with red tatreez Palestinian embroidery is hanging on a washing line in a garden.

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

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

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

An elderly Palestinian woman wearing a hijab throws a handful of olives into a bucket outside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The hands of an elderly Palestinian woman can be seen sifting through green olives.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A peacock runs on the ground.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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History: Palestine, Dilemmas of Decolonization

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History: Palestine, Dilemmas of Decolonization

November 6th, 2023 by Stephen Sefton

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

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

ETHNIC CLEANSING: Palestinian refugees in 1948 Photo: Public Domain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from Tikkun

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

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Palestinians are speaking those same words but in Arabic.

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

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

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

Featured image is from The Duran

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

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

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

The Agency pointed out:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death Toll in Nuseirat Wedding Hall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Farajullah continued,

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

There’s No Place for Joy in Gaza

Gaza resident, Ahmed Tamraz said,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He continued, lamenting,

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

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

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Global Research Editor’s Note

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michel Chossudovsky, October 6, 2023

Update 

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

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

Heroin is a multibillion dollar trade. What are the broader implications?
Will this lead to a resurgence of war in Afghanistan (U.S military intervention) with a view to restoring the trade in heroin?
Will this contribute to the rehabilitation of the Southeast Asia Golden Triangle production of heroin (Thailand, Myanmar, Laos),
.
Will it contribute to a boost in the production of cocaine in Latin America (Colombia, Peru, Bolivia) not to mention a surge in the role of Mexico’s Drug Cartels which currently control  a large share of the flow of narcotics, into the United States. (cannabis. Cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine).
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, November 5, 2023

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

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

The Taliban Does What the US Did Not

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Looming Catastrophe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

US Complicity in the Afghan Drug Trade

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unraveling the Opioid Crisis: An Impending Disaster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A “Uniquely American Problem”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broken Society

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

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

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

Empire of Drugs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Global Research News Hour Episode 407)

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Transcript of Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, October 31, 2023.

Part One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Global Research: Do you think —

MDN: — civilians from Gaza were —

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

MDN: Exactly, —

GR: I mean, that —

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

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

GR: 2.3 million people in that space.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MDN: Exactly.

GR:— soldiers. (inaudible)

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

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

GR: How is —

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

GR: (inaudible, 14:17) —

MDN: — any evidence.

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

MDN: Well, they have —

GR: — like, the —

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GR: You mentioned in —

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

—Intermission—

Part 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GR: I want —

MDN: — what television is necessarily doing.

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

MDN: Well, —

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

MDN: So, —

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Notes:

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

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First published on October 16, 2023

*** 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

Featured image is from TUR

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

**

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Yinon Plan: Order from Chaos…

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

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

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

Securing the Realm: Redefining the Arab World…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Securing the Realm: The Israeli Blueprints to Destabilize Damascus

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

The 1996 document states:

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

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

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

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

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

The document states:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Eradication of the Christian Communities of the Middle East

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preparing the Chessboard for the “Clash of Civilizations”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTES

[1] Richard Perle et al., A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (Washington, D.C. and Tel Aviv: Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies), 1996.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Barak Ravid, “Israeli diplomats told to take offensive in PR war against Iran,” Haaretz, June 1, 2009.

[6] Perle et al., Clean Break, op. cit.
[7] Aluf Benn, “Sharon says U.S. should also disarm Iran, Libya and Syria,” Haaretz, September 30, 2009.
[8] Richard Perle et al., Clean Break, op. cit.
[9] Robert Marquand, “Why Europe is turning away from multiculturalism,” Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 2011.

[10] Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books October 1997), p.211.
[11] Ibid.

 

GAZA: L’Eroismo di un Popolo

November 4th, 2023 by Manlio Dinucci

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

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

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

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

Manlio Dinucci

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

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Youtube :

España – Una pausa humanitaria para seguir matando

November 4th, 2023 by Javier Díaz Muriana

Introductory Note

Today are thoughts are with the People of Palestine. 

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

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

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

UN Secretary General’s Antonio Guterres’ Double Speak 

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

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

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

Divisions are splintering societies. Tensions threaten to boil over.

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

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

As outlined by the Centre for Research on Globalization:

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

Global Research, October 27, 2023

***

Palestine: Apartheid, Stolen Lives and Land,

History Erased, United Nations Deaf Mute

by

Felicity Arbuthnot

July 30, 2017

 

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

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

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

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

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

Source Israelpalestinenews.org 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

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Financial Dictatorship Changes Human Consciousness

November 4th, 2023 by Jaras Valiukėnas

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

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

The Problem that No One Wants to Notice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

View on the Problem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ll put it in my own words:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consciousness Is the Battlefield for the Future of Humanity

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

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

The Nature of Consciousness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is It Possible to Stop the Destructive Processes?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

*

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

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

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The US Was Never About Freedom and Democracy

November 4th, 2023 by Jim Miles

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

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

Background Precis

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

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

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

U.S. Evangelism

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

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

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

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

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

Oil and the US Dollar

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

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

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

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

*

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Jim Miles is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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

17 Questions to Challenge the Climate Change Crisis

November 4th, 2023 by Paul A. Philips

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***

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

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

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

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

Here are some of those predictions.

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

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

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

Climate Change Crisis – Alarmist Reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take look at this eye-opening video:

Climate Change – Activists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q17. While activists get funded, who gains?

Climate Change Crisis – In Summary

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

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

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***

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

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

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

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

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

US Meddling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Foreign Fingerprints

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured image is from Silent Crow News

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***

Executive Summary

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

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

The key conclusions:

  1. 47% personally know someone who was killed by the COVID virus
  2. 24% personally know someone who was killed by the COVID vaccine.
  3. 42% said it was somewhat likely or very likely they would join a major class-action lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies for vaccine side effects. That would make it the largest class action in US history by a long shot.

The implications are stunning:

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

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

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

Introduction 

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

They did.

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

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

Survey Result Data 

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

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

Charts

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

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

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

Implication to Pfizer and Moderna Stock 

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

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

Here’s is a summary of the reasons:

Class action lawsuit is a stronger influencer than trust

This is likely much closer to the truth

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

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

X follower opinion on where Moderna is heading

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is it suddenly confidential now after her death??

The Last Survey 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Limitations of the Survey 

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

How Credible Is the Study?

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

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

Click here to read the full article.

Here is the link to the Rasmussen Report.

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Featured image is from COVID Intel


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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First published by Global Research on September 22, 2023

***

Introduction 

Friends, look around you: The World is in a state of economic and social chaos. Censorship and the suppression of fundamental human rights is ongoing at the level of the entire planet. 

That is why Beethoven’s call: Friends, get Rid of all those Ugly Sounds” is of utmost significance. It constitutes an Act of Resistance, without which the “Ode to Freedom”, namely “Real Democracy” is an impossibility. 

As long as “totalitarian rule” prevails, whether it is in the 19th Century under The Austrian Empire or Today (2020-2030) under US-NATO and the World Economic Forum, the “Ode to Freedom” cannot under any circumstances become a reality.

Not surprisingly, the 21st Century Globalists and their intelligence apparatus are emulating the Austrian Empire, with “a spy network” far more sophisticated than that cooked up by Prince Klemens von Metternich.

In the present context, Beethoven’s “Friends, Get Rid of all those Ugly Sounds” should be understood as An Act of Resistance and Worldwide Solidarity against the prevailing structures of corruption, fraud, social divisiveness and political abuse. As well as a stance to the conduct of genocide against the People of Palestine. 

Friends: What this indelibly requires is the creation of an articulate and cohesive mass movement at the level of the entire planet (nationally and worldwide) which confronts the Deep State Globalist architects of this insidious project: Big Money, Big Pharma, the Information Technology Conglomerates, the Security Apparatus, Intelligence, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Oil an Big Energy, and the Corporate Media.  

While this is no easy task, Let us join hands and restore Schiller and Beethoven‘s “Ode to Freedom”. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, October 7, 2023, November 4, 2023

 

***

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony’s first performance was in Vienna in May 1824 at the Kaiserliches Hoftheater am Kärntnertor

The Ninth Symphony is considered as a powerful symbol of solidarity, social equality, peace and human values. 

But there is something else, which has been ignored by musicologists and historians of music:

Beethoven added three extra verses –coupled with corresponding musical pitches– which were not contained in Friedrich von Schiller’s original “Ode to Joy”: 

Oh friends, not these sounds!
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!

But let us sing more pleasantly
Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen

And more joyful ones!
Und freudenvollere!

These three verses were sung right at the beginning, they were followed by

Freude!

Freude!

Freude schoener Goetterfunken

Tochter aus Elysium

Schiller first composed the Ode in 1785, six years after the French Revolution of 1789. The text of Schiller’s Ode was revised several times. Originally Schiller composed an “Ode to Freedom” that he subsequently changed to “Ode to Joy”. This change “did not appear in print until 1849“.

“[It was the revised version of 1803] which Beethoven used to erect the impressive musical-textual monument of the fourth movement of his last symphony.

He also modified Schiller’s text quite drastically in places, adding, by way of an introduction, a whole strophe of his own. 

In Beethoven’s eyes, adding a few lines of his own did not mean interfering with the text  but establishing a transition between worldly desire – leading to chaos, as expressed in the introductory [three verses] of the fourth movement – and the will of Man to free himself, as evoked by the poet. (Maximiano Cobraemphasis added)

Were these “three verses” at the beginning of the Ode to Joy inserted by Beethoven intent upon downplaying both the religious overtones as well as the “idealism” pertaining to peace, brotherhood and solidarity as contained in Schiller’s poem. I should mention that the Ode also contained “masonic elements”.

“we must bear in mind that the message conveyed by the Ode echoed and reflected its whole historical environment. Around 1810, in the streets of Bonn,  vitalized by revolutionary echoes from across the Rhine, students sang the Ode to the music of the Marseillaise” (Maximiano Cobra).

The poem was alive with the French revolution’s ethos. “All humans become brethren where joy touches the heart,” wrote Schiller.”

Dear Friends, Listen carefully to the 4th movement.

Three verses were inserted (in musical phrases) at the outset of the 4th movement (O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!). What was Beethoven’s message to humanity??

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! Oh friends, not these sounds! Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen, But let us  sing more pleasantly.

which in substance means:  Friends, get Rid of all those “Ugly Sounds” 

Was Beethoven expressing in the lyrics and melodies of the 4th Movement, the true nature of the “ugly sounds” which in Vienna in the year 1824 characterized the derogation of peace, brotherhood and fundamental human rights at the height of the Austrian Empire under Kaiser Franz I (1804-1834)

Kaiser Franz I, Emperor of Austria  (image left)

 

This was during the “Metternich Period”, which was marked by social repression and “empire building”. Metternich forcibly crushed public demonstrations, coupled with media censorship and the suppression of freedom of speech.  

Was this a call by Beethoven “to tone down the revolutionary spirit”? 

Or was it a subtle message within Beethoven’s musical brilliance to the socially repressive regime of the Austrian Empire which at the time was under the helm of State Chancellor (Prince) Klemens von Metternich?

Klemens von Metternich (image right)

While Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy is today considered Worldwide as a message to all mankind: “living in peace and harmony together”: 

–these three verses added by Beethoven should be remembered as a “Symbol of Resistance” to totalitarian rule. 

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! 

Metternich was firmly opposed to Liberalism: “He used a wide-ranging spy network to dampen down unrest”.(Alan Sked, “Decline and Fall of the Hapsburg Empire 1815-1918″

As long as “totalitarian rule” which is predicated on the suppression of “real democracy” prevails, in the 19th Century under Metternich or Today (2020-2025) under the World Economic Forum, the “Ode to Joy” or the “Ode to Freedom” cannot under any circumstances become a reality.

Not surprisingly, the 21st Century Globalists and their intelligence apparatus are emulating the Austrian Empire, with “a spy network” far more sophisticated to that cooked up by Prince Klemens von Metternich. 

There are (unconfirmed) reports that Metternich and Beethoven had met. Metternich was present at Beethoven’s funeral three years later in 1827. I should mention that Beethoven was not overtly against the aristocracy. He dedicated the Ninth Symphony to Koenig Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia. 

The Choral starts at about 6.00 with the first three verses (which are indicated in German on the screen of the first video).

The second video featuring the 9th Symphony was recorded in Berlin

The full lyrics in German and English are indicated below at the foot of the article   

Video

Beautiful and Creative Production of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (1.11) (Ode to Joy, Chorale at about 45’00)

Flash Forward to the 21st Century

Today, at the outset of the 21st Century, Europe’s “Classe politique” is once again committed to sustaining the “ugly sounds” of a social order marked by corruption, fraud and social divisiveness.

The music of Beethoven’s 4th Movement was embedded in the EU-Anthem. The poem by Friedrich von Schiller was not used.

Beethoven’s first three verses of the Ode to Joy. A Symbol of Resistance

Let us recognize Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as a symbol of resistance, which in the contemporary context should be used to address the numerous “ugly sounds” of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, coupled with “Shock Treatment” and the Neoliberal agenda, which is endorsed by corrupt politicians, leading to the impoverishment of millions of people Worldwide.  

 

Lyrics in English and German. Original in German.
 
Oh friends, not these sounds!
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
But let us sing more pleasantly
Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen
And more joyful ones!
Und freudenvollere!
joy (joy)
Freude (Freude)
joy (joy)
Freude (Freude)
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods
Freude, schöner Götterfunken
Daughter from Elysium
Tochter aus Elysium
We enter, drunk with fire
Wir betreten feuertrunken
Heavenly ones, your sanctuary!
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Your spells bind again
Deine Zauber binden wieder
What fashion strictly divided
Was die Mode streng geteilt
all people become brothers
Alle Menschen werden Brüder
Where your gentle wing rests
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt
Who managed the big hit?
Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen
To be a friend’s friend
Eines Freundes Freund zu sein
Whoever has won a devoted wife
Wer ein holdes Weib errungen
Interfere with his cheers!
Mische seinen Jubel ein!
Yes, whoever has a soul
Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele
Being calls on the face of the earth!
Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund!
And those who have never been able to do so, steal
Und wer’s nie gekonnt, der stehle
Crying out of this bond
Weinend sich aus diesem Bund
All beings drink joy
Freude trinken alle Wesen
At the breasts of nature
An den Brüsten der Natur
All good, all bad
Alle Guten, alle Bösen
Follow her trail of roses
Folgen ihrer Rosenspur
She gave us kisses and vines
Küsse gab sie uns und Reben
A friend tested in death
Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod
pleasure was given to the worm
Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben
And the cherub stands before God!
Und der Cherub steht vor Gott!

 

 

Michel Chossudovsky, September 21, 2023

 

 

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Author’s Introductory Note 

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

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

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

In the words of Netanyahu: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article was first published in 2016.

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

Michel Chossudovsky, October 11, 2023 

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bombing of Fallujah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

http://www.mayayres.com/  

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

What the BBC Fails to Tell You About October 7

November 4th, 2023 by Jonathan Cook

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***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Savages only understand the language of savagery, after all.

Brutal Tango

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charred Bodies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Hamas as Savages’

Consider for a moment the stark contrast in the western media’s treatment of events on October 7 and its treatment of the strike on the car park at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in northern Gaza on October 17, in which hundreds of Palestinians were reported killed.

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

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

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

Similarly, it is still a popular throwaway line among the western commentariat that “Hamas carried out rapes”, though once again the allegation is evidence-free so far.

We should be clear. If Israel had serious evidence for either of these claims, it would be aggressively promoting it. Instead, it is doing the next best thing: letting innuendo gently sink into the audience’s subconscious, settling there as a prejudice that cannot be interrogated.

Hamas undoubtedly committed war crimes on October 7 – not least, by taking civilians as human shields. But that kind of crime is one we are familiar with, one “ordinary” enough that the Israel military has been regularly documented carrying it out too. The practice of Israeli soldiers taking Palestinians as human shields goes under various names, such as the “neighbour procedure” and the “early warning procedure”.

Worse atrocities may have happened too, especially given the unexpected scale of Hamas’ success in breaking out of Gaza. Large numbers of Palestinians escaped the enclave, some of them doubtless armed civilians with no connection to the operation. In such circumstances, it would be surprising if there were no examples of the headline-grabbing atrocities being committed.

The issue is whether such atrocities were planned and systematic, as Israel claims and the western media repeats, or examples of rogue actions by individuals or groups. If the latter, Israel would be in no position to judge. Israel’s own history is littered with examples of such crimes, including the documented case of an Israeli army unit taking captive a Bedouin girl in 1949 and repeatedly gang-raping her.

Savagery would certainly not be a uniquely Hamas trait. Following the October 7 attack, videos have been emerging of systematic abuses of any Hamas fighters captured, whether alive or dead. Images show them being beaten and tortured in public for the gratification of onlookers, when there is clearly not even the pretence of information gathering. Others show the bodies of Hamas fighters being defiled and mutilated.

No one can claim the moral high ground here.

What the media’s uncritical promotion of Israel’s “Hamas as savages” narrative has achieved is something sinister – and all too familiar from the West’s long colonial history. It has been used to demonise a whole people, presenting them either as barbarians or as the willing protectors and enablers of barbarism.

The “savages” narrative is being weaponised by Israel to justify its mounting campaign of atrocities in Gaza. Which is why it is so important that journalists don’t simply allow themselves to be spoonfed. Far too much is at stake.

Hamas committed war crimes on October 7 on a scale that is unprecedented for any Palestinian group. But there is little more than Israeli narrative spin so far to suggest that there was an unparalleled depravity to Hamas’ actions. Certainly from what we know, it is hard to see that anything Hamas did that day was worse, or more savage, than what Israel has been doing daily in Gaza for weeks.

And Israel’s actions – from bombing Palestinian families to starving them of food and water – has the blessing of every major western politician.

*

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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from the author

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***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Are Israel’s Attacks on Gaza’s Hospitals Legal?

November 3rd, 2023 by Lorraine Mallinder

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***

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

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

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

INTERACTIVE_HOSPITALS_FUEL_GAZA_NOV2_2023 copy-1698922157

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

Which Hospitals Are Under Threat in Gaza?

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

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

“Evacuating them means killing them.”

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

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

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

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

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

Has Israel Said It Will Attack Hospitals?

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

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

INTERACTIVE-LIVE-TRACKER-GAZA-NOV2-2023-1045GMT

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

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

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

To What Extent Are Hospitals Protected by International Law?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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***

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to read the full article on Daily Mail Online.

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Featured image: Londonderry based GP Dr Mary McCloskey has been suspended for six months for a series of ‘vitriolic’ comments made in videos shared online that a tribunal said had the potential to undermine public health advice, other medics and discourage people from getting Covid jabs (Source: DMO)


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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***

 

 

 

 

Settlements in the region of Gaza date back to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, noted a Jordanian archaeologist, highlighting that the Early to Middle Bronze occupation was documented at Tell es-Sakan and Tell el-‘Ajul.  

“During the 14th century BC, Gaza was Egypt’s administrative capital in the Levant. Later on, during the Iron Age [2nd-1st Millenium BC], Gaza had become one of the five Philistine cities known as Pentapolis,” noted Mohammad Najar, who received a PhD degree in History and Archaeology at Moscow Institute of Archaeology.

The region continued to be important during the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Persian, Nabataean, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic periods. 

Furthermore, Gaza was an important trade hub between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Peninsula, and during the Roman/Byzantine period, Gaza became a Christian bishopric.

“The region had become part of the Muslim Empire in AD638,” Najjar said, adding that the most of the known sites are located to the north of Wadi Gaza, the area that has been exposed to severe and systematic destruction by Israeli occupying forces. 

The significant sites include a necropolis dated to the Roman period, Tell Umm-‘Amer (St Hilarion monastery), a local saint who lived between AD291 and AD371.

“St Hilarion and St Porphyrius were credited for the conversion of the southern Palestine into Christianity. Three churches, among them St. Porphyrius had been already targeted along with 47 mosques, hospitals and thousands of homes and civilian targets,” Najjar underlined. 

The relentless bombardment had already destroyed countless homes and displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, putting many archaeological and cultural sites of Gaza at a severe risk and threatening them with the total destruction, Najjar said.

Because of the continuing Israeli aggression on Gaza, Najjar thinks that the world should step up and voice its discontent.

“Heritage communities in the Arab World and the world at large should speak up against the destruction of these heritage sites, and above all, unspeakable atrocities against Palestinians, the custodians of this heritage,” Najjar underscored.

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Featured image: A mosaic at the church of St Stephen at Umm at-Rasas in Jordan depicts ancient Gaza (Photo courtesy of Mohammad Najjar)

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***

Israel has started a ground operation, albeit limited, in the north of Gaza.

This was a red line for pro-Iran resistance groups, and the results are starting to come.

Pro-Iran Hezbollah in Lebanon began hitting Israeli troops on the border, pro-Iran Houthis in Yemen started launching missiles, and pro-Iran resistance groups in Iraq and Syria started hitting US bases from the air.

In fact, Yemen, under the rule of the Houthis, became the first Arab country to declare war on Israel since the Yom Kippur war in 1973.

Sheikh Ekrem Al Kaabi, Secretary General of the pro-Iran Al Najaba Movement in Iraq:

“Iraqi Islamic resistance decided to liberate Iraq militarily, this issue has been resolved, thank God for the mujahideen. He declared war against the USA, saying, “There will be no stopping, no ceasefire, no withdrawal.”

The speech of Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, which is Israel’s biggest nightmare after the heavy slap it received in 2006, will be made at 3 o’clock on Friday, is eagerly awaited.

The first bits of information are that Hezbollah will officially enter the war.

See what Mideast Spectator says:

“Anyone who has been following the war since October 7 knows that all parties are anxiously awaiting the next move of the resistance axis groups, especially Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, which pushed Israel out of Lebanon in the 1980s and defended the South against another invasion attempt in 2006, is a much stronger and more capable enemy for the Israeli army than Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

Since the beginning of the war, unofficial statements and media reports have been circulating claiming that Israel’s ground intervention in Gaza would be considered Hezbollah’s red line.

Although these statements are not official, many of you wondered when Hezbollah would actually step in.

Hezbollah has been attacking IDF positions on the Lebanese border every day without exception since October 8. Nearly 50 martyrs have been announced, and we are curious about the number of Israeli casualties (IDF announced that 11 of its soldiers died only yesterday). In addition to the deaths, many Israeli army vehicles and tanks were also destroyed.

But there are hints that something else is brewing.

Something bigger.

It’s unprecedented.

Every day for the past 24 days, Hezbollah has consistently and successfully targeted Israeli surveillance and surveillance equipment along the Lebanese border.

Dozens of radar stations, night vision cameras, infrared sensors, long-range communication towers, telescopes and antennas have been destroyed by the Lebanese group in the past few weeks.

By disabling most of the IDF’s observation network, these operations effectively blinded the Israelis in the north, especially in Metula and surrounding settlements.

We may begin to wonder why Hezbollah places such emphasis on this modus operandi, rather than simply killing soldiers or destroying tanks.

Now that the IDF has dedicated the majority of its forces to urban combat operations in Gaza, a unique opportunity arises in the north.

A project that can shape the future of the region. Hezbollah knows this and has been waiting for this moment for 17 years.

The North is now a complete blind spot and, based on current information, it is very likely that the real event is yet to come.

The only thing we can do is wait for Nasrallah’s speech on Friday (at 15.00), but there may be some surprises waiting for us. “All the signs are there.”

Yes, a big event is coming, its name is a regional war.

So what does the one-man regime in Turkey do?

Apart from rallies and demonstrations, that is!

The radar base in Kürecik, Malatya, which is responsible for monitoring Iran for Israel’s defense, is fully operational.

Just yesterday, two US B-1B bombers from Germany landed in Incirlik.

These giant planes are used for massive bombing raids.

The reason for the planes’ arrival was announced as refueling.

The real reason is the war against Lebanon and Syria.

And for now…

Then maybe Iran is the target, we will get there soon.

As you know, the USA has a huge naval fleet stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The one-man regime in Turkey continues its membership in NATO, amid slogans of Mehmetçik (epithet of Turksh soldier) to Gaza.

This could be the only reason for not making peace with Assad in Syria.

Especially in a period like this, when a major war is approaching again on our borders.

But the real danger lies in a possible war with Iran.

How? Let me explain.

In his statement on October 28, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Spokesperson Ramazan Sharif warned that the war started by Israel in Gaza could include US forces and said,

“All US bases and flights in the region are under observation and control. The military support operations provided by the US to the Zionists “We are watching and following,” he said.

This was perceived as a veiled threat.

Although later, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, called for economic sanctions instead of war and asked all Muslim countries to sanction the Tel Aviv regime and stop oil and goods exports to the occupied regions.

Iran softens initial harsh statements.

He says that he will not go to war for other nations.

However, things are very complicated in the field and it is not clear what will happen.

For example, the spokesman for the pro-Iran Ansarallah movement in Yemen claimed that United Arab Emirates warplanes carried out attacks on Gaza.

China and Russia support Palestine and declare that they will stand by Syria and Iran.

Russia certainly has a score to settle with Israel, which supported Kiev in the war in Ukraine.

China, on the other hand, is happy that the war has moved to West Asia instead of Taiwan and the South China Sea.

It has already started the negotiation process with the USA, which is in a difficult situation and cannot wage a war on three fronts.

But he is making statements assuring that he will support Iran and that its territorial integrity will not be damaged. These are different from previous middle-of-the-road diplomatic discourses.

The danger lies here: What will be the consequences, even if there is a small possibility, if a war breaks out and the US and NATO start using bases in Turkey and Iran is also targeted?

Suppose Iran hit Incirlik.

Russia and China also stepped into the field against the USA or provided the necessary weapons to pro-Iran supporters.

US pressure on Türkiye increased and the opportunity was seized to break Montreux agreement which protects Blacksea from NATO invasion.

Moreover, the Caucasus is already tense; Azerbaijan-Israel relations are known, Iran also supports Armenia.

What happens if Turkey and Iran eventually come face to face and Turkey is assigned the role of Iraq in 1980 and Erdoğan is assigned the role of Saddam in 1980?

The consequences of this would be catastrophic.

Nearly 2 million people died in the Iran-Iraq war in 8 years, the borders did not change, but Iraq was completely doomed to the USA.

As a result, the weak Iraqi carrion crow became a victim of US imperialism and breakaway puppet state Kurdistan was established.

Shouldn’t we look at history and learn from it?

However, the 1998 Adana Agreement and the 2017 Astana Process were always carried out in cooperation between Iran and Turkey against terrorism, and very important results were obtained.

The most important thing for Turkey to do is to prevent the use of imperialist bases on its territory against its neighbors and regional countries and to make immediate peace with Damascus.

This is the only way to support Palestine.

Unless he does this, what happens will be nothing but empty words.

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***

NAFLD is characterized by excess fat buildup in your liver. Without proper treatment, it can lead to serious liver problems including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which causes inflammation and fibrosis, or scarring of the liver. NAFLD also increases the risk of other health conditions, including cardiovascular disease

The first documented cases of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) didn’t come about until 1980. Today, NAFLD affects 32.4% of people globally, and it’s the most common cause of liver transplant in adults under the age of 50

NAFLD also affects up to 9.6% of American children aged 2 to 19, making it as common as asthma. In 15- to 19-year-olds, prevalence is as high as 17.3%. Prevalence among children 0 to 17 has risen 168.3% since 2017, with a particularly precipitous rise starting in 2020

The dramatic rise in NAFLD in early 2020 may in part be due to the COVID lockdowns, which had the effect of raising childhood obesity rates by 8.3% to 13.4%, depending on the age group

Maternal obesity and high consumption of diet soda and/or junk food during pregnancy have both been linked to NAFLD in offspring, and one theory is that artificial sweeteners may be programming the metabolism of the fetus to favor fat storage over energy production

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Fatty liver disease used to be a disease seen almost exclusively in the elderly, primarily heavy drinkers. The first documented cases of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) didn’t come until I was in medical school in 1980.1 At the time, the researchers described it as a “hitherto unnamed liver disease of unknown cause.”

In June 2023, scientists proposed rebranding NAFLD to “metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease,” to highlight its relation to other metabolic conditions such as diabetes. What connects all metabolic conditions is that your body is not converting food to energy in an efficient manner.

In the video above, independent health researcher Jay Feldman investigates the true causes of NAFLD. This is Part 2 of an eight-part series. It’s like a master’s course on NAFLD, as he goes over virtually everything you could possibly want or need to know about it. If you or someone you know is currently struggling with NAFLD, I strongly encourage you to view all eight episodes.

In the featured episode, he explains why fructose is NOT the main culprit as commonly thought, how your liver produces fat from both fructose and dietary fats, and how impaired energy production in your mitochondria results in NAFLD.

What Is NAFLD?

NAFLD is characterized by excess fat buildup in your liver. Without proper treatment, it can lead to serious liver problems including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), which causes inflammation and fibrosis, or scarring of the liver.

NASH may lead to cirrhosis, which increases the risk of liver cancer, and end-stage liver disease. NAFLD also increases the risk of other health conditions, including cardiovascular disease, which is the No. 1 cause of death in people with NAFLD. NAFLD often has no symptoms, although it may cause fatigue, jaundice, swelling in the legs and abdomen, mental confusion and more. 

Your liver carries out more than 500 functions that are essential for health. This includes the production of bile (which breaks down dietary fats and carries away waste), converting excess glucose into glycogen, and regulating amino acids in the blood. It’s also important for detoxification, helping to clear your blood of toxins.

The good news is that your liver, more than almost any other tissue in your body, has phenomenal regeneration capabilities. Even if 90% of it has been removed, it can regrow to its normal size. NAFLD can also be successfully reversed in its early stages via lifestyle changes, like healthy eating and exercising.

NAFLD Prevalence Has Skyrocketed

Today, NAFLD affects 32.4% of people globally,2 and it’s the most common cause of liver transplant in adults under the age of 50.3 NAFLD also affects up to 9.6% of American children aged 2 to 19,4making it as common as asthma.5 In 15- to 19-year-olds, prevalence is as high as 17.3%.6

What’s particularly strange is that the skyrocketing prevalence in children and teens is quite new. As illustrated in the graph below from Trilliant Health,7 prevalence of NAFLD has risen 168.3% since 2017, with a particularly precipitous rise starting in 2020.

nafld graph

Obesity Is a Primary Risk Factor for NAFLD

As reported in a March 2021 paper on pediatric NAFLD:8

“The largest risk factor for NAFLD is obesity. Obesity and NAFLD in children are often associated; however, they are not concomitant.

In a 2019 study in 408 children with obesity using whole liver magnetic resonance imaging–proton density fat fraction, the prevalence rate of NAFLD was 26.0%, or roughly one in every four children. In the Teen LABS study of adolescents with obesity severe enough to warrant weight loss surgery, the prevalence rate of NAFLD was higher at 59%.”

The dramatic rise in NAFLD in early 2020 may in part be due to the COVID lockdowns, which had the effect of raising childhood obesity rates by 8.3% to 13.4%, depending on the age group.9

Artificial Sweeteners May Impair Metabolism

That said, NAFLD also occurs in an estimated 8% of normal weight children.10 Inherited predisposition may be part of the problem. But the environment in utero can also influence a child’s risk of NAFLD,11 and this is a far more likely explanation for the recent explosion in prevalence among children.

Maternal obesity and high consumption of diet soda and/or junk food during pregnancy have both been linked to NAFLD in offspring, and one theory is that artificial sweeteners may be programming the metabolism of the fetus to favor fat storage over energy production.12

Babies are also routinely fed unnaturally high amounts of sweeteners in infant formula and baby food. In recent years, the baby formula industry has started marketing formula made with corn syrup solids instead of lactose from cow’s milk. It’s said to be better for babies with sensitivity to lactose.

However, recent research13 suggests formula made with corn syrup solids significantly increases your child’s risk of obesity by age 4, and by extension NAFLD, and those who consume the highest amounts of formula have the highest risk.

So-called “transition formula” and “toddler milk” also contain higher amounts of sugar than regular cow’s milk. Both products are pure marketing inventions that have no nutritional basis. Meanwhile, research14 has shown that consumption of unsweetened cow’s milk is associated with a lower risk of NAFLD.

The Role of Diet

Indeed, our modern diet is probably the most important driver of this condition. As reported by The Washington Post:15

“… many doctors believe that our modern lifestyle — diet, the increase in sedentary activities related to technology and environmental exposures — is to blame. One of the liver’s jobs is to filter toxins, and when something in the body is out of balance, the organ can become damaged and fail …

A little fat in the liver is normal, but when more than 5% of its cells contain fat, the organ’s ability to do its job is impeded, and pediatric specialists say some children they treat have livers with 30 to 40% or even as high as 60% fat …

Some pediatric experts theorize there’s a mismatch between our genetics and the highly processed and sugary foods that have come to dominate childhood diets.

Nutritional surveys show that meals eaten by kids changed radically in a generation, going from very little ultra-processed foods in the early 1980s … to more than 67%16 in recent years. Such diets lead to hormonal changes and other stresses on our bodies.

‘It creates a time bomb, and it is killing our kids,’ said Barry M. Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.”

The Washington Post goes on to cite a January 2022 systematic review17 that found “a parallel but delayed rise” in noncommunicable diseases with rising prevalence of ultraprocessed foods.

Between 1800 and 2019, processed and ultraprocessed foods rose from less than 5% to more than 60%. This radically altered the macronutrient content of our diets. Sugar and seed oil (or “vegetable oil”) consumption rose dramatically, while saturated fat from animals dropped.

Ditch the Fast Food to Protect Your Child’s Health

Of these, I believe the transition from saturated animal fats to seed oils has played the biggest role. As detailed in “Linoleic Acid — The Most Destructive Ingredient in Your Diet,” seed oil is the primary source of linoleic acid (LA), which destroys your mitochondrial function.

I’m convinced excessive LA consumption is the biggest contributor to chronic disease in the Western world, including NAFLD. To understand how LA undermines your health, and that of your children, please read through that article and watch the video included in it. Both provide a comprehensive overview of how LA drives chronic disease of all kinds.

To avoid LA, you’ll need to avoid processed foods, fast foods and most restaurant foods, and focus on real, whole, organically grown foods instead. Processed foods are also routinely contaminated with glyphosate, which can contribute to liver problems. Disturbingly, recent testing revealed 95% of school lunch items had detectable levels of glyphosate,18 so, if at all possible, provide your child with homemade lunches.

A shocking 100% of meals also contained heavy metals at levels up to 6,293 times higher than the maximum levels allowed in drinking water. Meanwhile, most of the meals were “abysmally low” in essential nutrients.

Fast food also contains extremely low amounts of essential nutrients, especially B vitamins. In fact, zero amounts of vitamin B9 or B12 were detected in the top 10 fast foods sampled.19

That’s rather remarkable, considering B12-rich foods include beef and chicken, both of which are staples in fast food, yet fast food beef and chicken provide no B12 at all! If that doesn’t convince you that fast food meat is nowhere near the same as grass fed organic meat, I don’t know what will.

Fatty liver can also be driven by excess sugar when, in addition to seed oils, you are consuming more than 35% or so of your calories as fat. This is likely why this condition is now found even in young children.

Nutrients That Help Combat NAFLD

Upping your intake of specific nutrients can also be helpful if you have NAFLD. Examples include:

Choline — Choline is important for normal liver function and liver health by moving fat out of your liver. It also helps maintain membrane integrity and manages cholesterol metabolism, including low density lipoproteins (LDL) and very low-density lipoproteins (VLDL). Choline deficiency has been shown to enhance abnormal fat deposits in your liver, causing NAFLD.20

In fact, some experts believe NAFLD is largely the result of shunning choline-rich foods like liver and egg yolks,21 which is then worsened by consuming too much LA. You can increase your intake by consuming more choline-rich foods, such as organic pastured egg yolks, grass fed beef liver, wild-caught Alaskan salmon and krill oil. Arugula is also an excellent source.

Vitamin B12 and folic acid may also be protective and have been found to decrease the progression of NASH.22

Niacinamide, also known as nicotinamide (NAM) — Niacinamide is a precursor to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), a vital signaling molecule that’s believed to play an important role in longevity. Supplementation has also been found to decrease oxidative stress and prevent fatty liver.23

N-acetylcysteine (NAC) — NAC is a precursor needed for glutathione biosynthesis. It’s used as an antidote for acetaminophen toxicity, which causes liver damage by depleting glutathione. Research published in Hepatitis Monthly has shown NAC supplementation helps improve liver function in patients with NAFLD.24

Milk thistle — This herb contains silymarin and silybin, antioxidants that are known to help protect your liver from toxins and even help regenerate liver cells.25

CoQ10 — CoQ10 keeps your mitochondria healthy and plays a crucial role in the production of ATP, the cellular energy required to keep you alive. Supplementing with CoQ10, or the natural form called ubiquinol, has been shown to improve NAFLD by reducing oxidative stress and inflammation.26

Remember that supplements should always be used in combination with a healthy lifestyle, including eating right and exercising. If you’re overweight, losing 7% to 10% of your body weight can improve NAFLD, including lowering liver fat content, liver inflammation and fibrosis.27

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Notes

1, 5, 7, 12, 15 Washington Post October 3, 2023 (Archived)

2 The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology September 2022; 7(9): 851-861

3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11 Clinical Liver Disease March 2021; 17(3): 196–199

9 JAMA 2021;326(14):1434-1436

13 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition October 2022; 116(4): 1002–1009

14 Frontiers in Nutrition 2023; 10: 1119118

16 JAMA 2021;326(6):519-530

17 Frontiers of Nutrition January 13, 2022

18 Moms Across America September 28, 2022

19 Moms Across America October 18, 2023

20 Oregon State University Linus Pauling Institute

21 chrismasterjohnphd.com November 23, 2010

22 Journal of Hepatology, 2022; doi: 10.1016/j.hep.2022.06.033

23 The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry May 21, 2022

24 Hepatitis Monthly, 2010; 10(1):12

25 Indian J Biochem Biophys. 2006 Oct;43(5):306-11

26 Journal of Prescribing Practice. 2020;2(4)

27 Curr Obes Rep. 2019 Sep; 8(3): 220–228

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***

Going in the opposite direction to the wishes of US President Joe Biden, the House of Representatives will vote this week on a financial and military aid bill for Israel, said Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Mike Johnson.

His statement was said a day before Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu revealed that the Ukrainian military have suffered more than 90,000 casualties since the counteroffensive began.

“We are going to move a stand-alone Israeli funding bill,” Johnson said on October 29 in an interview with the Fox News network.

“There are lots of things going on around the world that we have to address, and we will, but right now what’s happening in Israel takes the immediate attention, and I think we’ve got to separate that to get it through. I believe there will be bipartisan support for that, and I’m going to push very hard for it.”

Since returning from the Middle East, Biden has been trying to approve a bill for $106 billion in aid for Ukraine, Israel, and national defence projects. In the president’s document, around $61 billion would go to Ukraine, while $14 billion would be allocated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So far, the US Congress has approved $113 billion in resources for Ukraine, but opposition from the Republican Party has grown stronger since then, and many no longer want anything to do with financing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the conflict in Ukraine. Johnson believes the Israel-only funding bill will gain strong bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. 

In the same light as Johnson, it is recalled that Republican Senator Ted Cruz said Senate Democrats and Biden are “playing games with Israel funding” during an interview on October 22 with FNC’s Maria Bartiromo.

“I think it’s a big mistake. I don’t know if it’ll pass,” Cruz said about the Israel/Ukraine aid package. “The hostages are not just being held by Hamas. The hostages are also being held by the Biden White House, because he’s taking Israel and saying, you can have Israel military aid if you pass everything I want on Ukraine, if you pass Biden’s funding.”

Evidently, a week later, greater pressure is mounting for Biden to back down from linking aid to Israel with Ukraine. There is a humbling realisation in Washington that Ukraine has no chance of winning the war against Russia, but there remains a stubbornness in the Biden administration from deviating from its failed policy.

Shoigu said at the 10th Xiangshan Security Forum on October 30 that since Kiev launched its counteroffensive in June this year, the Ukrainian Armed Forces suffered more than 90,000 casualties (dead and wounded) without achieving any significant success on the battlefield. 

“Just since June 4 — that is, since the start of the widely publicised and generously Western-sponsored Ukrainian counteroffensive — Kiev has lost more than 90,000 soldiers killed and wounded, around 600 tanks and almost 1,900 armoured vehicles of various types,” Shoigu said.

News of the catastrophic loss in the Ukrainian military will only further fuel calls to end financing Kiev’s hopeless efforts against Russia.

To put the 90,000 figure in perspective, the British Army has 76,220 active personnel, demonstrating how Ukraine has lost more soldiers in a few months than the size of an entire army of a supposed superpower.

At the same time, Shoigu expressed confidence that the Russian Armed Forces will continue to “methodically and confidently perform the tasks assigned to them and ensure the safety of civilians.”

Previously, Russian President Vladimir Putin had already stated that the Ukrainian counteroffensive had no results. At the time, the Russian leader emphasised that Russia was moving forward calmly to complete its objectives in the special military operation.

This is the grim reality of the war in Eastern Europe – Russia has destroyed the Ukrainian military without even going on the offensive yet. It is for this precise reason that Johnson wants the US to shift focus away from Ukraine and onto the Middle East as a priority since Washington’s interests have a chance of being preserved or advanced, unlike in Eastern Europe, where Moscow has successfully countered NATO’s plans.

“My intention is not to use this for any partisan political gamesmanship. This is a very serious matter,” the US House speaker said, adding: “We have got to address this now. We should not waste any more time. And I think we will get it through the House this week.”

Once the bill is passed, it will officially confirm that Ukraine is no longer the top foreign issue for Washington to deal with, marking the beginning of the end of blind Western support for a lost cause.

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

Featured image: President Joe Biden participates in an impromptu private meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the Hotel Kempinski in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, October 18, 2023. (Official White House Photo by Erin Scott)

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***

In the latest publicity stunt of its kind, with rapidly diminishing returns, the representatives of the Israeli state at the United Nations have taken to appearing with the gold star on their lapels reminiscent of those used during the Nazi persecution of European Jews in the 1930s.

“Never Again” was inscribed in the center.

The accompanying explanatory speech given by the ambassador ran along those central talking points, referencing the Holocaust over and over and likening it to the Hamas attack on October 7th.

The rhetorical implication is clear: political opposition to Israel is antisemitic. Subtlety is apparently not a priority of Israeli diplomats.

In a similar vein, the ADL, while it’s running its censorious political operations in the United States, routinely conflates legitimate political speech with antisemitism and all other manner of verboten -isms.

It’s time we stopped playing these semantical games. Antisemitism and anti-Zionism are two distinct concepts:

  • “Antisemitism” is defined as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group”
  • “Anti-Zionism” is defined as “opposition to the establishment or support of the state of Israel”

The former is a millennia-old religious/ethnic prejudice; the latter is a political ideology in opposition to a political entity called Israel.

Opposing the activities of the Israeli state is not tantamount to hating Jews any more than opposition to the Kremlin is to anti-Christianity. Indeed, a large contingent of Orthodox Jews — although they do not receive much corporate state media coverage due to the obvious narrative difficulty they present — oppose the state of Israel on religious grounds.

Again, the point must be emphasized: these anti-Zionists are not just Jews, but among the most hardline, dogmatic, fundamentalist Jews on the planet. No one in their right mind, even if they think their political views on Israel are misguided, could honestly conceive of them as antisemitic.

This is basic stuff, such that a child could easily understand.

Of course, it’s not that the purveyors of this conflation don’t understand it; they cynically weaponize the memory of the Holocaust to use as political cover for the activities of the state of Israel.

There are many relevant ironies.

First of all, the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism places Jews who live outside of Israel and have no political affiliation to Israel in a disadvantageous position. Why should an American Jew be necessarily, by virtue of their ethnic or religious identity, tied to a state thousands of miles away in an entirely different region of the world, which they may or may not support?

The second notable irony is that the “anti-colonial” so-called progressive ideology that has gripped the Social Justice™ left was very much fostered by the likes of the Anti-Defamation League — which has, by the way, also consistently smeared any critics of its social engineering programs as literal Nazis.

As frequently occurs, the Social Justice™ beast loosed on the West has turned on the group that fostered it, and the ADL’s tired retort of “shut up, Nazi” to any deviation from neoliberal state orthodoxy has failed to produce the desired neutralizing results.

This was the central lesson of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” – one that, again, a child could grasp.

Further, the pro-Israel talking points employed by groups like the ADL and AIPAC to maintain American and European political support for Israel are themselves confused and convoluted.

Is Israel a modern, secular liberal Democracy™ in the mold of the West (“the only democracy in the Middle East,” as Americans are constantly reminded, in intended juxtaposition to the unwashed hordes of Islamics surrounding it) or is it a theocratic ethnostate as the “home of the Jews”?

The answer depends on which narrative is most advantageous to Israeli interests at any given time.

If it’s attempting to justify its military exercises using the Holocaust as political cover — “Never Again” – then Israel is a theocratic ethnostate. If it’s trying to appeal to secular people and institutions in the West – including secular Jews – then Israel suddenly becomes a vibrant oasis of Democracy™ in the otherwise autocratic Middle East.

These are, again, childish semantics games with transparent political and social engineering applications that all of us should be able to see through and discard if we’re ever going to have a serious conversation about the devastating state of affairs in the Middle East for all parties involved.

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Armageddon Prose.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Shahid Bolsen puts out the challenge to the people of Israel to move away from the culture of an ill-conceived American exceptionalism and try something different.

Bolsen’s proposal is worthy of serious consideration. (Prof. Anthony Hall

(

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The US Is Fueling, Not Avoiding, a Regional War

November 3rd, 2023 by Hasan Illaik

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Israeli ground operations in the Gaza Strip have begun. The Financial Times says Israel will not reveal much about these military operations in order to avoid Hezbollah and Iran entering the war.

The Americans are now orchestrating Israel’s military campaign against the Gaza Strip. Washington believes this will maximize the potential of achieving both US and Israeli goals, without the conflict leading to a major regional conflagration –  but it cannot guarantee that. The Israeli war on Gaza – managed, funded, and armed by the US – has a high possibility of turning into a regional war. 

Impossible Goals

Since 7 October, after Israel awoke to a nightmare called “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Tel Aviv has set itself goals so high that they are impossible to implement:

Israel’s first stated goal is the total elimination of Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, as announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and other military and civilian officials in Tel Aviv. 

They know that achieving this is next to impossible. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak – also a former defense minister and army chief of staff – has said that eliminating Hamas is impossible because it (resistance) is an ideology that exists in people’s minds and hearts.

The only way this goal can be achieved practically is by getting rid of the entire population of the Gaza Strip. This matter was put on the table in Tel Aviv – and first came to our attention when Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi announced he was rejecting an Israeli proposal to allow Gaza residents to flood into the Sinai Peninsula. 

The Kingdom of Jordan – adjacent to the occupied West Bank, which has no physical connection to Gaza – also rejected a similar Israeli proposal to allow Palestinians to flood into Jordan, via its Foreign Minister Ayman Al-Safadi. 

These Israeli proposals to uproot and displace millions of Palestinians were not just an idea flitted about casually. Hebrew media outlet Mekovit has leaked an official Israeli Ministry of Intelligence document that proposed the displacement of more than 2.4 million Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt.

Just these two Israeli goals – in addition to being nigh impossible to achieve – could ignite all of West Asia and beyond. The region’s Axis of Resistance has sent several clear messages expressing its readiness to enter the war if Israel and its allies either threaten the existence and capabilities of the Palestinian resistance, and/or implement the project to displace Palestinians.  

Resistance factions in Lebanon – including Hezbollah and allies such as Al-Fajr Forces, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) – have been carrying out operations against Israeli army positions along the Lebanese-Palestinian border, on a daily basis, since 8 October. 

US occupation military bases in Iraq and Syria have been subjected to more than 20 attacks by missiles and drones to date. From Syria, missiles are launched from time to time towards Israeli army positions in the occupied Golan Heights.

From Yemen, the Ansarallah resistance movement has launched three batches of missiles and drones, which have reportedly been intercepted by US and Israeli air defense systems.

On the Iraqi-Jordanian border, thousands of resistance supporters have gathered, hinting at the possibility of crossing the border to head toward occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank. In general, the Axis has loudly proclaimed that it is not afraid to enter the war if the Palestinian resistance forces need that help.

Washington, Leading Israel’s Gaza War

On the other side of this conflict, Washington has weighed in to offer full support to the occupation army in its military campaign against Palestinians. To date, the US has deployed two aircraft carriers and dozens of naval vessels in the Mediterranean Sea. Its air defenses (Patriot and THAAD systems) have been strengthened in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Jordan, and the occupied Palestinian territories. In addition, the Americans have deployed 2,000 special forces soldiers in Palestine, strengthened their forces and increased the number of combat aircraft in all their military bases in West Asia, and added military advisors to “assist” the Israeli army in its war on Gaza.

Both in practice, and publicly, the US government and military are running this Israeli war.

Washington has convinced Israel to dial down its objectives, firstly, by reversing plans for a large-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, and replacing those with smaller, targeted operations with specific objectives.

These goals notably include: controlling uninhabited areas on the northern and central edges of the Gaza Strip; carrying out raids to kill the largest possible number of resistance fighters and destroy as much of the resistance’s infrastructure as possible; and launching operations to find or rescue Israeli captives held by the resistance.

Moreover, Washington is working hard to whitewash its right-wing Israeli ally’s genocidal assault on Gaza by introducing humanitarian aid in small quantities. At the same time, the US seeks to get rid, even if only partially, of the burden of Israeli captives, via Qatari-mediated negotiations to release a number of Israeli and foreign prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance since 7 October. 

Although Tel Aviv prefers to wrap up the prisoner file in one go, the resistance refuses to do so: it seeks to maintain this power card, whether for the purpose of negotiating the release of more than 7,000 Palestinian captives held in Israeli detention centers, to negotiate Gaza’s reconstruction after the war – or to lift Israel’s siege over the beleaguered territory.

What Can the Ground War Achieve?

On the night of 27-28 October, the Israeli army began to occupy agricultural lands in northern Gaza, and penetrated – from its eastern borders – into a sparsely built-up area in the center of the Strip.

Tel Aviv’s goal was to cut off the northern part of Gaza – which includes the heavily populated Gaza City – from the south, and to continue to apply fierce pressure on the city and its surroundings in a protracted battle to wear down its inhabitants. This operation was flanked with air and ground bombardment, the likes of which Palestine has never, ever witnessed before.

In the past two days, Palestinian resistance forces have managed to confront the enemy with anti-armor missiles, carried out an operation behind enemy lines near the Erez crossing, continued to fire missiles toward Israeli cities and military sites, and confronted an infiltration by Israeli armored vehicles into Wadi Gaza, an area in the middle of the Strip.  

In the meantime, the US is working overtime to ensure that Israel’s enemies do not interfere in the war by threatening them with diplomatic messages, fleets, planes, and soldiers – which has de facto transformed this armed conflict from a broad and rapid operation into a low-boil, long-term war. 

Washington has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at Israel: military cover, weapons, operations management, and even engineering the theater of operations to bolster the restoration of Israel’s image of deterrence. The US is betting that the military pressure on Hamas, in addition to the humanitarian burden it has placed on it, will eventually lead to political concessions by the Palestinian resistance. So far, Israel has killed nearly 10,000 civilians in Gaza, and has either damaged or partially or completely destroyed most civilian buildings In the Gaza Strip.

‘Israel Lost the War’

Despite the oversized US assistance, Israel’s military position is more fragile than it has been in decades. As former Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces General Yair Golan strikingly tweeted on October 27:

“We lost the war. No step, no matter how strong or successful, is able to erase the defeat of October 7. However, from this failure, there must be a political victory that will ultimately lead to the disarmament of the Gaza Strip.”

This is Washington’s ultimate political goal too. But to reach this end, the US must juggle an infinite number of variables, any of which could set the region afire. Without even offering a light at the end of the tunnel – i.e., a political solution to the Palestinian plight – the US, and its unconditional, early war support for Israel, has attracted an improbable number of regional armies and militias to the conflict in Gaza: the Israeli army, US fleets, marines, and special forces in the eastern Mediterranean and West Asia, 50,000 resistance fighters in Gaza, tens of thousands of resistance fighters in Lebanon, tens of thousands of resistance fighters in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of fighters in Yemen, naval vessels from Britain and other western nations deployed to ensure Israel security.

This, without even considering the game-changing arrival of Iran’s armed forces and missile batteries into the war.

Amidst this huge number of troops exchanging fire, any one error could lead to the outbreak of a regional war that would, in reality, be a global war, since the US is the conflict’s main actor. This is akin to bringing a herd of elephants into a china shop, and remaining convinced all the while that there is a force capable of keeping them calm.

The bottom line? The US is presenting itself as a guarantor that Israel’s assault on Gaza will remain territorially limited, but is, in reality, adding every possible ingredient to this conflict that could transform it into a regional war.

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***

The Greek philosopher Aristotle in his treatise “Politica”, defined man as ” political animal” (zoon politikon), to indicate that “man is a social and rational being who lives in societies organized politically and in whose public affairs participates to a greater or lesser extent, with the aim of achieving the common good pursued by politics: the happiness of citizens.”

Historically, the party idea was inherent in the conception of shared power (antagonistic to the monarchy’s idea of monopoly power) and responsible to the various parts of society that over time was consolidated as a means of expression of the citizen’s will and government action.

Initially, the primary role of the parties was to promote the participation of citizens in democratic life and to contribute to the integration of national representation; But the bleeding cases of corruption of the majority of the parliamentary parties combined with the transformation of these parties into entities totally refractory to the basic needs of the citizenry, would have provoked the disaffection of broad layers of citizens.

Thus, the political ruling caste would have been transformed into a power clique (equivalent to a mini-state within the state), which would use nepotism to perpetuate itself in the party for life and in turn, would be choked by the pressure lobbies of the establishment.

Likewise, the political parties would be afflicted, according to Ortega and Gasset, by the “aristophobia or fear of the best” because “the sentimental rebellion of the masses, the hatred of the best and the scarcity of them in politics would be the real reason for the great Hispanic failure”. As a solution, at the end of the essay “Invertebrate Spain”, Ortega points to the “imperative of selection that should govern the spirits and orient the wills and using it as a chisel, get to forge a new type of Spanish man”.

The Need to Regenerate Political Life

The German philosopher Hannah Arendt in her book “On Revolution”, 1963 states that

“the party system has prevailed in Western societies, imposing representation as the only form of government. They also present defined political programs, which prevent citizens from exercising their abilities to form and express their own opinion”.

For Arendt, “the representative government has become oligarchic: public freedom and happiness have become the privilege of a few”. The political parties would therefore be part of an obsolete and fossilized system, so it advises the council system as “the only form of organization of a large political community that ensures the right to participation of all its members in the public sphere as they constitute real political spaces, suitable to serve as scenarios of action”.

In conclusion, it is urgent to renew the internal structures of political parties to ensure a transversality that allows the implementation of channels of dialogue with citizens and facilitates the creation of spaces available for free interaction. This would facilitate their participation in the preparation of the electoral programs of the parties as well as the lists of candidates for the various elections, combining representation with action to avoid that the citizenry is condemned in eternis to be only “political animal” in his private life.

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

The Growing Menace of Zionism and Christian Zionism

November 3rd, 2023 by Prof. Anthony J. Hall

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The obscene abomination sparked on October 7 in Israel, Gaza, Western Asia and the world demands that some explicit attention be directed at the dangerous role of global Zionism. As presently constituted, Zionism is gaining traction as a catastrophic menace to the people, peoples, governments as well as all the living creatures of the world. Beginning in the late 1800s, Zionism became the driving force pushing the violent founding, expansion, and global interactions of the Jewish state of Israel.

Clearly the likes of BiBi Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, and Itamar Ben-Gvir must bear much of the political and criminal responsibility for engineering the permitted terror unleashed on the Israeli population outside the Gaza prison walls. No doubt the events set in motion by these three lead officials and the Knesset members that back them, occurred in tandem with the actions of other major players in the intertwined activities of the Israeli and US Deep States.

Following the blanket reporting throughout the West on the topic of Hamas savagery, a large-scale bombing campaign was initiated targeting 2.3 million Gazan Palestinians. The propaganda campaign accompanying the bombing included the fictional spectacle of the 40 beheaded Israeli babies.

By now it is clear that the object of this false flag merger of theatre, authentic deaths and extravagant exaggeration, was meant to produce the basis for public outrage inside and outside of Israel.

This murderous means of manufacturing shock and disgust was meant to arouse responses of indignation to be exploited by the Netanyahu government. The nature of this exploitation was to “justify” wholesale violations of international laws entailed in the assaults on the stateless “refugees” of Palestine.

The public was clearly informed that the intention of the Israeli attacks was to depopulate and displace those dubbed by Israeli officialdom as the “human animals” presently inhabiting Gaza. These “human animals” are largely the third generation of stateless Palestinian “refugees.” They are largely children whose grandparents were uprooted from their ancestral lands in 1948. The 1948 conflict is remembered in Jewish Israel as the “War of independence” and as the “Nakba”— the “catastrophe”— by the indigenous Arab population.

See this.

For some of the Israeli conspirators, but especially Benjamin Netanyahu, the goals of the Oct. 7 psychological operation extended to drawing the US Armed Forces into a war with Iran. Ironically the growing demands of the Orthodox Jewish sects demanding Israeli enforcement of Jewish religious law, is pushing the country towards a theocratic mirror image of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Netanyahu is well known to be a major protagonist in the lies and crimes of 9/11.

Ever since the Netanyahu family hosted in 1979 the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, Israel’s most well-known politician became a maestro expert at exploiting public fears derived from the deployment of Muslim patsies, assets and mercenaries. In this fashion Netanyahu became the Zionist Napoleon of the Global War on Terror. He was an innovator in the development of public platforms for the merger of fact and fiction…. platforms of deception where most of our public policy hoaxes are formulated these days.

The magnitude of the current manufactured crisis through which we the people of the world are presently living, indicates the dire necessity of looking beyond the character flaws and criminal actions of specific individuals who preplanned the permitted terror events of Oct. 7.

The events of Oct. 7 are, of course, in one sense a part of a broad array of systemic malfunctions contributing to deep and pervasive breakdowns of humanity’s means of surviving, let alone thriving, on planet Earth.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a map showing the occupied West Bank and Gaza as part of Israel during his speech at the UN General Assembly, 22 September 2023 (Reuters)

For a number of reasons, however, the explosion of the events of 7 Oct. onto the world scene stands as a telling example of Zionism as a unique genre of harm-creating ideology. An indicator and driver of Zionism’s malevolent power is the imposition of many obstructions put in the way of honest and open discussion of its impact on humanity. Zionism is not generally a subject that is open for public exercises in intellectual or philosophical discourse. Zionism, therefore, is an ideology unlike humanity’s many other isms.

The evidence is strong that humanity is being set up for another World War as the truly definitive point of entry into what was introduced in 2020 as the “Great Reset.” Who is playing Russian roulette with humanity’s destiny?

Agents at the highest echelons of Zionism’s elaborate pyramids of power think nothing of trying to steer the course of world history to better serve their lust for omnipotence and top-dog control.

This pattern is well illustrated by the role of Rothschild-related bankers in founding both Israel as well the architecture of the banking system adopted in 1913 by the future US superpower. To this day the Wall Street financial system remains a subordinate extension of the Rothschild-related financial institutions based largely in the City of London and its worldwide network of tax havens.

This same pattern of Zionist power is well illustrated by the outcomes of World Wars One and Two. Both world wars created the basis for major forward steps along the way to creating the Jewish States of Israel in 1947-48. Concerning these and other developments, many will be aware of the thick web of censorious institutions and individuals devoted to blocking easy public access to such basic features in our shared history. Typically, any analysis that touches on the magnitude and effect of Zionist power is smeared and pushed to the margins as the stuff of anti-Semitic “tropes” and “conspiracy theories.”

God’s Chosen People? God’s Chosen Country? 

A large and growing body of evidence, including from Egyptian sources, is making it increasingly clear that the events of 7 Oct. are, in retrospect, very different from what was originally reported. Israeli officials with the complicity of a few Hamas insiders decided to roll the dice on humanity’s future by allowing and even helping the showcased violence unfold as it did.

Are the manufactured contortions of 7 Oct. indicative of an attempt to vie with God in the quest for omnipotence? Do Zionist principles extend beyond the conception of God’s Chosen People to a vision of God’s Chosen Country?

Notions of the collective superiority of Jews over other peoples and nations are derived from both the Torah and the Old Testament. Some observers take this notion further. They accuse Zionism and Zionists of drawing heavily on certain Talmudic sources calling for harsh discriminatory subjugation of non-Jews, sometimes referred to pejoratively as Goys.

Zionism is related to Judaism but the two are not the same. Indeed, since the Zionist idea was introduced by Theodor Herzl in 1897, many Jews have at various times been hostile to the creation of a Jewish state. The Jewish critics of Zionism feared that the creation of a country specifically for Jews, would place in jeopardy their own acceptance in countries like, for instance, France, Germany, Britain and the United States.

Many Jewish critics of Zionism feared that the quality of their loyalty to the countries of their birth and adoption might become suspect if a Jewish state was created. They feared that, with the consolidation of a Jewish state they might risk being tainted in the eyes of their non-Jewish countrymen. Some of these non-Jews might feel provoked to look for conflicts in the loyalties of their Jewish associates.

These doubts within the Jewish world have never been totally resolved. Moreover some religious Jews, including a number of vocal rabbis, assert that Judaism is at its very foundation a religion. Judaism, they assert, is demeaned by making it the constitutional basis for the making and operation of a distinct country.

Nevertheless, the Zionist agenda in the creation and building up of Israel has apparently been widely embraced in varying degrees by the majority of Jews in the Diaspora. This Jewish embrace of Israel, however, tends to favour voting with financial contributions rather than with full-fledged Jewish immigration into Israel as citizens and permanent residents. Indeed, the current troubles in Israel are resulting in increased rates of Jewish emigration away from that troubled and increasingly divided country.

Zionism and Censorship

It is important to emphasize that not all Jews are Zionists. Moreover, most Zionists are Christians rather than Jews. In fact Christian Zionists outnumber all of the Jews, Zionist or not, in the world. There are 50 million or so Christian Zionists belonging to evangelical churches mostly throughout North America.

This Christian Zionist contingent is fast becoming a major factor in the geopolitics of the war on Palestinians declared by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the hours following the heavily contested events of 7 October.

The ironies are becoming abundant in that Israeli citizens, unlike most Christian Zionists, are fast becoming aware of the copious evidence pointing to sabotage and duplicity of the Israeli government against its own people. This paradoxical development is becoming a significant factor in the Gaza debacle.

Without going into specifics, George Galloway made passing reference to this phenomenon in hosting his big television hit, The Mother of All Talk Shows (MOAT).

See this.

The London-based Internet telecast is developing an international audience of many millions of engaged participants mostly united in support of justice for Palestinians. This objective that has been front and centre in Galloway’s parliamentary and media career for about half a century. Some see George Galloway as one of the most skilled rhetoricians presently conversant in the English-speaking world.

Galloway referred in one broadcast to Israel, the United States and Canada as the three most hostile polities when comes to withholding support for the Palestinian cause. He mentioned that the US and Canada lacked any secure legislative platform for support by citizens seeking justice for the stateless Palestinians under the ruthless control of the Israeli government.

One way to view this legislative deficit in North America is to see it as a reflection of the dominant place of Christian Zionism whose adherents look to Greater Israel as the site of the climatic End Times predicted in the Book of Revelations.

The Zionist lobby in Canada, the USA and in many other countries exercises enormous influence over not only governing parties, but over the leadership of opposition parties as well. This pattern of Zionist control over legislative debate, combined with the notorious Zionist influence over the content of many media venues plus Internet search engines, is definitely gutting severely the vitality of democratic discourse. The power of Zionist agencies such as the AntiDefamation League in limiting free speech in the name of fighting hate speech is becoming increasingly infuriating, revolting and draconian.

To read the complete article, published on the author’s Substack, click: 

Looking out at the World from Canada.

The Israel-Gaza Conflict as Discussed in the Alberta Media

On 8 October I viewed with dismay the radical pro-Israel messages of Christian Zionism echoing throughout a group of alternative publications in my home Canadian province of Alberta. In the recent past these media venues were essential resources for the political community that brought Premier Daniel Smith to the job of Premier in the face of the strident opposition she faced from mainstream media venues.

As in many locations, these alternative media venues became essential resources in building a political base to oppose mandatory masking, lockdowns, injections, vaccine passports, digital IDS, Central Bank Digital Currency, and Climate Change extremism. This list is far from complete.

When Premier Smith took over the top job in Alberta, an oil and gas powerhouse, she famously identified with our movement by asserting that the so-called “unvaxxed” had experienced discrimination the likes of which was more pronounced than anything she had witnessed throughout her lifetime. On 8 October and in the days that followed I saw all the unity developed in our political contingent swept away by editorial diatribes in, for instance, Western Standard and True North. These diatribes seemed very consistent with unqualified reverence for Israel, a country that can do can no wrong in the eyes of many Christian Zionists.

Their editorialists of the venues in question piled all the blame on the stateless Palestinians of Gaza. Alternatively, the pundits saw only virtue in the Israeli claims of victimhood at the hands of a monstrous foe. The editorialists went further, declaring that anything other than unrestrained condemnation of the Palestinians was nothing short of anti-Semitic blaspheme.

This position was echoed by Rebel News, Ezra Levant’s Zionist web site that opposed for the last three years some aspects of Covidian tyranny. Rebel News, a fellow traveller in the Ben Shapiro school of “Conservative” broadcasting, sent Avi Yemini from Australia to Israel. His goal was to outdo the mainstream media in stoking up anti-Palestinian biases.

Christian Zionism in History and in Contemporary Times 

Sometimes the term Christian Zionism is used to describe those Christian officials such as Lord Balfour or British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who played significant roles in helping to apply Zionist ideology to the process of creating in stages the Jewish state of Israel.

The development of Jewish Zionism together with the popularization of Christian Zionism emerged from a current of thought stimulated by the historic Dreyfus Affair in France. This case unfolded between 1894 and 1906. The controversy was sparked by the widespread reaction to the conviction for espionage of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a wrongfully persecuted and prosecuted Jew.

The event stimulated the thinking of many public figures including Theodor Herzl and John Nelson Darby. A student in the mid-1800s of Biblical texts, Darby decided to oppose the dominant view of Christianity that emerged from the fulfilment of the Old Testament in the teaching, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Darby refused to accept the understanding that Christianity formed, in and of itself, the basis for universal salvation and peace in the kingdom of God.

See this.

Darby pushed back on the then-prevailing interpretation to argue that the Jews continued in their role as the sole descendants of Abraham who remained God’s Chosen People. He proclaimed that Jews should take possession of the historic land of Israel where they would become instruments of the Biblical prophesies that Darby interpreted as the rapture of the Church at the End of Times.

Darby’s seminal version of Zionism influenced the Christian Zionism of the very popular preacher Dwight L. Moody and Cyrus I. Scofield. First published in 1909, Scofield’s Reference Bible became the primary literary source for the emergence of the form of Christian Zionism that presently dominates North American evangelism.

Scofield’s role in this narrative is surprising for a man of his background. He was a lawyer forced to quit his elected post under serious allegations of financial fraud and forgery. A self-confessed alcoholic, Scofield abandoned his wife and two daughters. Near the end of his life he created false credentials advertising himself as “Rev. C.I. Scofield, Doctor of Divinity.”

In his “Reference Bible”, Scofield adopted the “dispensationalist” position of Darby. Darby’s interpretation highlighted a series of distinct stages, or dispensations, in the movement of his version of God’s Chosen people through history. Scofield’s methodology was to write explanatory notes throughout the text of the King James Bible. Included among his notes were guides providing suggested routes through various Biblical passages and Books. The Scofield Reference Bible was published by Oxford University Press, then and now one of the most prestigious literary venues in the English language.

The Scofield Bible project was updated in 1917, the date of the British imperial designation of Palestine as a “national home” for the Jewish people. The Oxford imprimatur on the Scofield Bible indicates that the project had powerful sponsors, possibly including Zionism’s primary initial backers, the Rothschilds. Baron Edmond de Rothschild, for instance, was a prominent member of the Paris branch of the legendary banking family. In the 1880s he started financing early Jewish settlements, agricultural initiatives, and manufacturing enterprises in Palestine.

As its current role in the Israel-Gaza conflagration illustrates, Christian Zionism is an important appendage in the campaign to expand Israel and to continue the process of the repressing, eliminating and displacing the land’s Arab inhabitants. The main message of the Scofield Bible is that those who criticize Jews “inevitable fare ill” and those that protect them fare well.” Pastor John Hagee, one of the pioneers of the modern-day Christian Zionist movement in America, translated Scofield’s words to mean “The man or nation that lifts a voice or hand against Israel invites the wrath of God.”

See this.

In Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon? Church of England Reverend, Stephen Sizer asserts,

“Sustained by a dubious exegesis of selective biblical texts, Christian Zionism’s particular reading of history and contemporary events…sets Israel and the Jewish people apart from other peoples in the Middle East…it justifies the endemic racism intrinsic to Zionism, exacerbates tensions between Jews and Palestinians and undermines attempts to find a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, all because ‘the Bible tells them so.’”

Quotations cited in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

Pastor John Hagee is the founder of the Christian Zionist group, Christians United for Israel. With 7 million members, this single organization has more members than all the Jews of the United States put together. Like many similar organizations, Hagee’s group helps promote the objectives of Zionism in pushing the expansion of Jewish settlements into Occupied Territory. Hagee’s group promotes the view that the Jewish ethnostate in Palestine fulfills a requirement to hasten the arrival of end-of-times prophecy necessary for Jesus Christ’s return to Earth — an event Christians often refer to as “the Second Coming.”

See this.

Pastor Hagee’s organization became an important agency thoroughly engaged in the highest level of government and politics in both the United States and Israel. The organization acts like a magnet for ambitious politicians seeking backing especially from rich Jewish donors like Sheldon Adelson.

Before he died, Casino billionaire Adelson was big contributor to the campaign and against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign. The BDS operation was meant to enable justice-seeking individuals and corporation to vote with their dollars. Israel and those that sanction its activities would be penalized financially on account of the dismal treatment meted out to the stateless Palestinians under its control especially in Gaza. On receiving an award from the founder of Christians United for Isreal, Adelson exclaimed, “I’ve never had a greater warm feeling than being honored by Pastor Hagee.”

See this.

Christian Zionism amounts to a many-faceted enterprise with individuals like TV evangelist Hal Lindsay predicting that the Apocalypse is becoming more and more imminent because current events are so quickly fulfilling Biblical prophecy. This cycle of publicity and promotion is fed when Christian Zionists regularly visit Israel where they are subjected to intensive indoctrination on the interpretation that Israel is simply engaged in self-defence against violent Palestinian aggressors.

All goes well as long as the evangelization points from Israel promoters towards Christian visitors. Trouble breaks out, however, when the roles are reversed. In fact the current Netanyahu government in Israel has passed a law that outlaws missionary work directed by Christian evangelists at Jews in Israel. Attempts to persuade Jews to convert to Christianity are not allowed.

Negotiate Rather Than Obliterate

The events of 7 Oct. have mushroomed in the global community so that the Chinese government, whose allies are Russia and Iran, now has six war ships in the Mediterranean preparing to intervene if and when a signal is given. China’s military intervention signals the mounting danger animating this crisis. This development also presents opportunity to negotiate rather than obliterate.

Can the people of Israel take the lead in holding their own government to account for what it did on 7 October by purposely putting their own constituents in harm’s way. All over the world we the citizens need to hold accountable our illegitimate enemy governments that one by one took part in global biowarfare campaign conceived to maim and kill us. Perhaps Netanyahu became so comfortable with this lethal process that he sacrificed a few more of his own people on 7 October as a pretext for removing the Palestinians from the site of their oil and gas rights just off the shore of the Gaza Strip.

Video: Message to the People of Israel. “Move away from American Exceptionalism”. Shahid Bolsen

Can the people of Israel move beyond the imperial heritage and character of Zionism to embrace another vision of their country. That vision would involve greater integration into the Arab culture that dominates their geographic setting. Shahid Bolsen puts out the challenge to the people of Israel to move away from the culture of an ill-conceived American exceptionalism and try something different. Bolsen’s proposal is worthy of serious consideration.

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Looking out at the World from Canada.

Dr. Anthony Hall is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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First published on May 31, 2023

*** 

Pfizer Appendix 2.2 Cumulative and Interval Summary Tabulation of Serious and Non-Serious Adverse Events from Post Marketing Data Sources BNT162-B2 

Date Compiled over period: December 19, 2021 to June 18, 2022.

***

These were not provided to me by Pfizer but through a source at the EMA (European Medicines Agency). I have no reason to doubt this document. Treat it as you wish. Assuming this source through the EMA is providing an accurate document and it sure appears as such, a lot of horrific conclusions should follow.

Spend time looking at it.

Let the weight of the conclusions sink in.

Why are they sitting on disastrous data that shows their product is lethal and dangerous to health?

Why are they even a publicly traded company?

Can you trade in death and disease on this level and be on the stock exchange as a legitimate institution of capitalism?

It’s like having a publicly traded company that allows you to hire their hit men for a fee.

 


Pfizer: R Psur 3 Appendix 2 2 Cumulative And Interval Summary Tabulation Of Serious And Non Serious Adverse Events
4.21MB ∙ PDF file
pfizer report (GR download)
Below Screen Shot of Page 1 of 393
Screenshot Pfizer report: PAGE 1 out of  393

I do not know how to estimate the under-reporting factor with this data. This data is reflective of December 19, 2021 to June 18, 2022.

Did Regulatory bodies have this and line people up like cans at a shooting range?

If Blood disorders doesn’t get you, how about cardiac events? There are pages and pages of Congenital defects, genetic and familial disorders.

Come to your own conclusion.

If you are not a physician you probably won’t be able to pronounce most of these adverse events. Perhaps your physician should be looking at this. 

What are governments doing with mandates and the funding and announcement of building more of these facilities?

Are governments even our friends, I mean do they like us, I mean do they like us alive?

Do they think they are accountable?

Was there money changing hands?

How does so gross a fraud take place on the people?

If Pfizer indicates this is not a true copy of their summary Tabulation of Serious and Non-Serious Adverse Events from Post Marketing Data Sources BNT162-B2 and they would like to comment with more current data we would all appreciate it.

Adverse Events

Total Number of Adverse Events 1,591,026 (Interval) and 4,964,106 (Cumulative)! 

Blood and Lymphatic System Disorders Spontaneous Adverse Events: 100,970

Cardiac Disorders Spontaneous Adverse Events: 126,193

Congenital Familial and Genetic Disorders: 1143 

(on these numbers, you have to consider how many women might have been pregnant of child bearing age)

Ear and Labyrinth Disorders: 47,038 

Endocrine Disorders: 4,115 

Eye Disorders: 61,518

GastroIntestinal Orders: 317,811

General Disorders and Administration Site Conditions: 1,605,985

  • (there was more pericarditis than site pain)
  • Death was reported in this category as 2,995
  • if you show this to your physician, you know what will floor them. the under-reporting factor: BECAUSE anytime someone said something to them they fobbed it off with anti-vaxxer, or it’s perfectly safe don’t be ridiculous. So they do the mental calculation. they reported zero of the events people reported to them. they figure also people kept things to themselves, suffered in silence and YOU WOULD WOULDNT YOU. AFTER ALL WHEN YOU INTERACT WITH THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT THEY MIGHT SHOOT YOU UP AGAIN. SO YOU STAY AWAY. like oh ya that dog bites at that house. I’m not going there anywhere near that bad dog.
  • define safe and effective for me. I’m waiting for a definition that fits this data.

Hepatobiliary Disorders: 4,380

Immune System Disorders: 31,895

  • This category also has Anaphylactic shock, and transplant rejection. But in Canada you need the vaccine to get a transplant. Gotta love health that is neither healthy or caring. We are officially in rules for rules sake.

Infections and Infestations: 167,382 

  • this category has dengue hemorrhagic fever. what protein pieces are in this thing?
  • epstein barr
  • fungal infections
  • genital and groin and pelvic infection stuff;
  • herpes, hepatitis
  • kidney infection
  • mastitis
  • pneumonia
  • sepsis!
  • septic shock
  • tuberculosis
  • there’s pages and pages of lists you can literally get an abscess anywhere.

Injury, Poisoning, Procedural, Complication: 241,342

  • In this category I found Exposure via Breastmilk: 5796 adverse events;
  • Inappropriate schedule administration (??): 57,181;
  • Incorrect dose
  • Incorrect route;
  • INTENTIONAL OVERDOSE!!
  • JOINT injury dislocation (I have family with significant joint issues following administration);
  • maternal exposure during pregnancy (there seems to be categories that reference shedding); 5956
  • off label use!: 54,370 you go in for a knee surgery and vax you.
  • overdose: 5144
  • Poor quality product administered: 30 828;
  • product administered to patient inappropriate age: 8718
  • Product administration error;: 7586
  • road traffic accident: 171 (bad reaction and then you pilot your plane, train, or automobile?)

Investigations: 24,038 

tons and tons of tests and investigations;

Musculoskeletal and Connective Tissue Disorders: 539,299 

Neoplasms Benign, Malignant, and unspecified Cyst: 1,391 

These are the cancers reported in the small time period since administration. Think on that. This would only presumably extend in effect over time.

Nervous System Disorders: 696,508 

You need to get into this document and go through the lists. Nothing like it. You will know what jumps out at you tremors, bells palsy, Aphasia and on and on.

Pregnancy, Puerperium, Perinatal: 4056

Well here’s your feotal deaths, abortions, and stillbirth section.

Includes your post-partum hemorrhaging etc.

Product Issues: 15,910

Psychiatric Issues: 77148 includes suicide

Renal and Urinary Disorders: 13,647 

Reproductive System and Breast Disorders: 178,353 

If romaine lettuce recalls included this kind of instance of vaginal hemorrhage (5034) no one would have Caesar salad again.

Respiratory, Thoracic & mediastinal Disorders: 190,720

Every category is filled with tragedies. This one is no different. Please review the document.

Skin and Subcutaneous Tissue Disorders: 224 633 

Social Circumstances: 9414 

bedridden and loss of personal independence in this category 

Surgical and medical procedures: 87073 

Gotta love the therapeutic that “peutics’ all this. The amount of medicalization, pain, suffering and death the shot has produced is unfathomable.

Vascular Disorders: 73,542 

You can’t run with horrific data and just say, we want to keep our secrets and our immunity and also one other thing, we want to keep injecting YOU, and ANOTHER THING, we want the government and corporations to mandate these to create economic and social apartheid such that you walk into taking these. And another thing, also our big brother the WHO, mandates and will mandate that you get whatever we make, and have your government pay for it.

AND ALSO THE WHO IS RIGHT NOW GIVING ITSELF THAT POWER. Right? Wait, what, you think the WHO also knew this shit was poison? So then are they A LEGITIMATE ORGANIZATION OR AN NGO HIT MAN ASSOCIATION?

The sheer number of terrible or ADVERSE EVENTS, it’s horrendous and mind boggling. Do you know what silence on data like this is? I can’t find the words. Maniacal genocide in increments through time. Have a more accurate way to describe it? Feel free to discuss.

You know what to do with this substack. Or you should.

*

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Featured image is from NaturalNews.com


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

A ONU rendeu-se aos EUA – ex-diretor de direitos humanos.

November 3rd, 2023 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

A ineficiência da ONU na prevenção de crimes contra a humanidade está a esgotar a paciência dos seus próprios funcionários. Recentemente, o diretor da Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) demitiu-se do seu cargo, alegando estar insatisfeito com o atual papel da ONU no conflito Israel-Palestina. Isto mostra muito claramente como a organização precisa urgentemente de se adaptar a uma realidade multipolar se quiser sobreviver às atuais mudanças geopolíticas.

Craig Mokhiber anunciou sua decisão de renunciar em 31 de outubro. Ele escreveu uma carta de demissão expressando a sua indignação com a situação atual da ONU, que ele acredita ter “se rendido” aos EUA. Segundo ele, o “lobby” sionista conseguiu controlar institucionalmente tanto a política interna dos EUA como a própria ONU, impedindo que fossem tomadas medidas contra o genocídio levado a cabo por Israel na Palestina.

“Mais uma vez, estamos a assistir a um genocídio a desenrolar-se diante dos nossos olhos, e a Organização que servimos parece impotente para o impedir (…) Nas últimas décadas, partes fundamentais da ONU renderam-se ao poder dos EUA e ao medo do lobby de Israel,  ao abandonar estes princípios e afastar-se do próprio direito internacional. Perdemos muito neste abandono, nomeadamente a nossa própria credibilidade global. Mas o povo palestino sofreu as maiores perdas como resultado dos nossos fracassos”, disse ele.

Mokhiber considera o sionismo uma ideologia colonialista, racista e expansionista, que expressa a continuidade do imperialismo europeu. Ele vê a política de criação de colônias ilegais como um projeto colonial para massacrar os povos nativos e dar a Israel o controle territorial da região. Mokhiber também denuncia veementemente o papel dos EUA, do Reino Unido e dos países europeus nesta política israelita e sublinha como os meios de comunicação ocidentais estão a agir com cumplicidade neste processo de genocídio e limpeza étnica.

“Mas o atual massacre em massa do povo palestino, enraizado numa ideologia colonial étnico-nacionalista dos colonos… não deixa espaço para dúvidas ou debate (…) Este é um caso clássico de genocídio. O projeto colonial europeu, etno-nacionalista, de colonização na Palestina entrou na sua fase final, rumo à destruição acelerada dos últimos remanescentes da vida indígena na Palestina (…) [Os EUA, o Reino Unido e] grande parte da Europa são totalmente cúmplices no terrível ataque [ao] armar ativamente o ataque, fornecendo apoio econômico e de inteligência, e dando cobertura política e diplomática às atrocidades de Israel (…) A mídia corporativa ocidental, cada vez mais capturada e adjacente ao estado israelense, [tem] continuamente desumanizado os palestinos para facilitar o genocídio e difundindo propaganda de guerra e defesa do ódio nacional, racial ou religioso”, acrescentou.

É curioso notar como as críticas de Mokhiber corroboram o que há muito vem sendo relatado por autoridades de países considerados inimigos do Ocidente. A ONU está, de facto, a tornar-se incapaz de resolver os problemas globais contemporâneos. Ao permanecer associada a uma realidade unipolar ocidental, a organização é incapaz de lidar adequadamente com as novas questões globais, o que a coloca em sério perigo existencial.

Um exemplo recente da incapacidade da ONU foi a forma como a organização lidou com a crise na Ucrânia. Mesmo com tantas provas de genocídio e limpeza étnica contra o povo de Donbass, não foram implementadas medidas para dissuadir o regime neonazista em Kiev, deixando à Rússia a única opção para lançar uma operação militar especial. No mesmo sentido, após o início da operação, a ONU não conseguiu chegar a um consenso sobre a necessidade de evitar o prolongamento do conflito, permanecendo inerte enquanto a OTAN enviava armas ao regime, transformando as hostilidades locais numa guerra em grande escala.

Agora ocorre o mesmo problema: um processo de genocídio e conflito militar se expande de forma devastadora e a ONU não consegue evitar o agravamento da situação. As resoluções propostas que poderiam evitar a carnificina e criar um diálogo diplomático, como a proposta pela Rússia apelando a um cessar-fogo, foram prontamente rejeitadas pelas potências ocidentais no Conselho de Segurança. Isto impediu qualquer forma de resolução diplomática e deu carta branca a Tel Aviv para continuar a cometer crimes contra o povo palestino sob a desculpa de “combater o Hamas”.

A ONU realmente parece ser refém dos interesses ocidentais. Na prática, para “agradar” às elites ocidentais e sionistas, a ONU permanece passiva face a um massacre e a um conflito que pode rapidamente escalar para um nível global – uma vez que os EUA e o Irã podem envolver-se abertamente a qualquer momento, o que tornaria as tensões ficam fora de controle. Com isto, a ONU parece caminhar para o mesmo fim que a sua antecessora, a Liga das Nações, que foi criada após a primeira guerra mundial com o objetivo de evitar um novo conflito semelhante, tendo falhado em evitar a Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Para evitar este trágico destino, só há um caminho para a ONU: uma reforma profunda, que a adapte à realidade geopolítica multipolar e crie mecanismos eficientes para prevenir conflitos e crimes contra a humanidade.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

Artigo em inglês :

https://infobrics.org/post/39756

Imagem : InfoBrics

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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

Understanding the Background of Israel-Palestine: What Is Israel’s “Final Solution”?

By Barry Kissin, November 02, 2023

Victims of this massacre are the direct descendants of the Palestinians forcibly expelled from their homes upon the creation of Israel in 1948, the deadly expulsion known as the Nakba.

Pilot Incapacitation – Jet2 Flight LS-1711 (MAN-DLM) Manchester (UK) to Dalaman (Turkey. First Officer Became Incapacitated, Pilot Diverted Aircraft to Budapest, Landed Safely

By Dr. William Makis, November 03, 2023

A Jet2.com Boeing 737-800, registration G-GDFP performing flight LS-1711 from Manchester,EN (UK) to Dalaman (Turkey) with 161 passengers and 6 crew, was enroute at FL370 about 80nm southsouthwest of Budapest (Hungary) when the captain decided to divert the aircraft to Budapest after the first officer became incapacitated.

The World Say No to US Blockade of Cuba

By CODEPINK, November 03, 2023

At the United Nations this week, the world community has overwhelmingly spoken out against the relentless U.S. embargo on Cuba. Yet President Biden remains unmoved, stubbornly clinging to the anachronic policies that are deliberately and systematically causing harm to the well-being of more than 11 million Cubans.

Zelensky: “Dictator” Who Is “Divorced from Reality”

By Ahmed Adel, November 02, 2023

Oleksii Arestovych, Volodymyr Zelensky’s former chief of staff, described the Ukrainian president as a “dictator” who has become “divorced from reality” in relation to the way he has reacted to the Russian special military operation since it began in February 2022.

The Palestinian Story Is Much Older Than October 7

By Najeh Shahin, November 02, 2023

Let us read the roots of this text-book chapter of atrocities which goes far before the 7th of October. Israel has successfully killed more than 10,000 innocent people in Gaza including around 3,500 children. Targeting houses and big buildings including hospitals and schools has been key to achieve this impressive number of loss of lives in three weeks.

Africa, the Palestinian Question and the Ongoing Siege of Gaza

By Abayomi Azikiwe, November 02, 2023

These attacks on the people of Gaza would be designated as war crimes by the United Nations if the U.S. and other imperialist states did not maintain veto power over the administrative conduct of the Security Council.

Video: BlackRock and the Oligopoly. James Corbett

By James Corbett and Truth Over Comfort, November 02, 2023

In today’s video, I spoke with James Corbett, about Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street, Financial Giants & The Oligopoly. The “big three” asset management corporations own shares in almost every major US company in each industry, making them the top institutional shareholders for these giant corporations.

Nearly 1 in 3 COVID-19 Vaccine Recipients Suffered Neurological Side Effects: Study

By Naveen Athrappully, November 02, 2023

Almost a third of individuals who received a COVID-19 vaccine suffered from neurological complications including tremors, insomnia, and muscle spasms, according to a recent study published in the journal Vaccines.

UK Labour Party: Two-fifths of Keir Starmer’s Cabinet Have Been Funded by Pro-Israel Lobbyists

By John McEvoy, November 02, 2023

The list of recipients includes party leader Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, and even the former vice-chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, Lisa Nandy, who is now shadow international development minister.

Why the West Is Whitewashing Terrorism in Vietnam and Myanmar

By Brian Berletic, November 03, 2023

As US-Chinese tensions grow and as it becomes increasingly clear the US is unable to compete with China head-to-head in terms of development, trade, and investment, especially in regions along China’s periphery, the US is resorting increasingly to asymmetrical measures including political coercion, subversion, and even violence.

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Incident: Jet2 B738 near Budapest on Oct 30th 2023, first officer incapacitated

By Simon Hradecky, created Tuesday, Oct 31st 2023 10:56Z

A Jet2.com Boeing 737-800, registration G-GDFP performing flight LS-1711 from Manchester,EN (UK) to Dalaman (Turkey) with 161 passengers and 6 crew, was enroute at FL370 about 80nm southsouthwest of Budapest (Hungary) when the captain decided to divert the aircraft to Budapest after the first officer became incapacitated.

The aircraft turned north towards Budapest, entered a hold while the captain was setting the aircraft up for the approach and subsequently landed safely on Budapest’s runway 13R about 30 minutes after leaving FL370 and taxied to the gate where medical services were awaiting the aircraft.

A replacement Boeing 757-200 registration G-LSAI positioned to Budapest and continued the flight delivering the passengers to Dalaman with a delay of about 5.5 hours.

The Boeing 737-800 resumed service about 5.5 hours after landing in Budapest.

Pilot Incapacitations and Deaths in Aug-Sep 2023 

Sep. 24, 2023 – Austrian Airlines Flight OS-188 (STR-VIE) Stuttgart to Vienna The captain became incapacitated, first officer took control of aircraft

Sep. 23, 2023 – Alaska Airlines Pilot – 37 year old Captain Eric McRae died suddenly in his hotel room during layover, was to fly that morning

Sep. 22, 2023 – Delta Flight DL-291 (CDG-LAX) Paris to Los Angeles – Pilot became incapacitated, was taken to cabin for care, plane diverted to Minneapolis, pilot taken to hospital

Aug. 27, 2023 – Air Canada Flight AC348 (YVR-YOW) Vancouver to Ottawa, one of the pilots felt ill and became incapacitated 50 min before landing in Ottawa.

Aug. 17, 2023 – IndiGo Flight (NAG-PNQ) Nagpur to Pune, India, 40 year old Pilot Manoj Subramanium died after collapsing at the boarding gate, about to board.

Aug. 16, 2023 – Qatar Airways Flight QR579 (DEL-DOH) Delhi to Doha, Qatar, 51 year old pilot collapsed as a passenger inflight and died, plane diverted to Dubai.

Aug. 14, 2023 – LATAM Flight LA505 (MIA-SCL) Miami to Santiago, Chile – 2 hours into 8hr flight, 56 year old Captain Ivan Andaur collapsed and died in the lavatory – plane diverted to Panama City!

Aug. 9, 2023 – United Airlines UAL1309 (SRQ-EWR) Sarasota to Newark, pilot had a heart attack and lost consciousness in flight

Aug. 7, 2023 – TigerAIR Flight IT237 (CTS-TPE) Sapporo to Taipei, copilot had a medical emergency after landing plane in Taipei

Pilot Incapacitations and Deaths (on Duty) Jan-July 2023: 

July 19, 2023 – Eurowings Discover Flight 4Y-1205 (HER-FRA) Heraklion to Frankfurt, pilot incapacitated, first officer took control, landed safely

July 16, 2023 – Small plane – 2006 Piper Meridian, flying from Westchester NY, crashed at Martha’s Vineyard Airport after pilot had medical emergency upon final approach and passenger took control of the plane and attempted a landing. Pilot, 79 year old Randolph Bonnist, died later in hospital.

June 7, 2023 – Air Canada Flight ACA692 (YYZ-YYT) Toronto to St.John’s, First Officer became incapacitated, deadheading Captain assumed duties

June 4, 2023 – Small plane – Cessna Citation N611VG flying Tennessee to Long Island, fighter jets spotted pilot slumped over in cockpit unconscious, plane crashed and all onboard died

May 11, 2023 – HiSKy Flight H4474 (DUB-KIV) Dublin to Chisinau (Moldova), 20 min after liftoff pilot became “unable to act”, plane diverted to Manchester

May 4, 2023 – British Charter TUI Airways Flight BY-1424 (NCL-LPA) Newcastle to Las Palmas Spain pilot became ill, plane diverted back to NCL.

May 3, 2023 – Air Transat and Air Canada Pilot Eddy Vorperian, age 48, died suddenly during layover in Croatia

April 21, 2023 – Easyjet Flight U2-6469 (LGW-AGA) London Gatwick to Agadir, Morocco, first offer became incapacitated, diverted to Faro, Portugal.

April 4, 2023 – United Airlines Flight 2102 (BOI-SFO) – captain was incapacitated, first officer was only one in control of the aircraft.

March 25, 2023 – TAROM Flight RO-7673 TSR-HRG diverted to Bucharest as 30 yo pilot had chest pain, then collapsed

March 22, 2023 – Southwest Flight WN6013 LAS-CMH diverted as pilot collapsed shortly after take-off, replaced by non-Southwest pilot

March 18, 2023 – Air Transat Flight TS739 FDF-YUL first officer was incapacitated about 200NM south of Montreal

March 13, 2023 – Emirates Flight EK205 MXP-JFK diverted due to pilot illness hour and a half after take-off

March 11, 2023 – United Airlines Flight UA2007 GUA-ORD diverted due to “incapacitated pilot” who had chest pains

March 11, 2023 – British Airways (CAI-LHR) pilot died of heart attack in crew hotel in Cairo before a Cairo to London flight (name & age not released)

March, 3, 2023 – Virgin Australia Flight VA-717 ADL-PER Adelaide to Perth flight was forced to make an emergency landing after First Officer suffered heart attack 30 min after departure.

Military Pilot Incapacitations 

Aug. 18, 2023 – US Army Aviation Center (Alabama) student pilot went into cardiac arrest behind the controls midflight (Aug.18, 2023), Instructor landed plane – pilot was dead for 18 minutes!

Recent Pilot Deaths (Not on Duty):

Pilot death – May 2023 – 4 Singapore Airlines pilots died suddenly in May 2023

Pilot death – May 9, 2023 – United Airlines and US Air Force Pilot Lt. Col. Michael Fugett, age 46, died unexpectedly at his home

Pilot death – April 13, 2023 – Phil Thomas, graduate of Flight Training Pilot academy in Cadiz, Spain (FTEJerez) died suddenly.

Pilot death – March 17, 2023 – 39 year old Westjet Pilot Benjamin Paul Vige died suddenly in Calgary

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

Featured image is from COVID Intel


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Reviews

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

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

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

The World Say No to US Blockade of Cuba

November 3rd, 2023 by CODEPINK

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At the United Nations this week, the world community has overwhelmingly spoken out against the relentless U.S. embargo on Cuba. Yet President Biden remains unmoved, stubbornly clinging to the anachronic policies that are deliberately and systematically causing harm to the well-being of more than 11 million Cubans. Despite the world’s condemnation of the blockade every year since 1992, the U.S. government continues to act in complete isolation from the international community.

In this solitary corner, the United States was joined only by Israel, a country that relies on the United States for billions of dollars, money that is now set to increase by an additional $14.5 billion to intensify the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

But President Biden is not only turning a deaf ear to the international community, he is also ignoring the democratic voice of his own people. Over a hundred resolutions condemning the blockade have been passed across the U.S., representing about 55 million Americans calling for an end to the inhumane unilateral siege on Cuba that has persisted for over 60 years.

The U.S. embargo has a negative impact on all sectors of Cuba’s economy and has unquestionably worsened the quality of life of Cubans by limiting their access to basic necessities, including medicines, food, and fuel. According to the Cuban government, from March 2022 to February 2023, the blockade caused an estimated $4.8 billion in losses to Cuba, representing more than $555,000 for each hour of the blockade. The inclusion of Cuba in the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism on January 12, 2021 exacerbates the impact of the economic embargo. This has led to an massive increase in the number of Cubans migrating to the United States in search of economic opportunities. 

The embargo is unjust and hinders Cuba’s inalienable right to development. It is also illegal and violates the United Nations charter and the principles of international law. The embargo’s extraterritorial provisions have not only prevented humanitarian aid from reaching Cuba through third-party countries, but have also prevented foreign companies from doing legitimate and lawful business in Cuba. 

While Cuba prioritizes healthcare and solidarity, the U.S. persists in causing harm and inflicting pain on the Cuban people in its failed, 60-year-old effort at regime change. We, at CODEPINK, will not stand idly by. We pledge to continue advocating for justice and tirelessly demanding that our government change its hostile policy towards Cuba by lifting the economic, commercial and financial embargo. We will persist in our call for the immediate removal of Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism—a designation that should never have been imposed in the first place. 

U.S. policymakers must abandon their outdated Cold War mentality towards Cuba, and instead listen to the world and start being a good neighbor.

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Featured image is from Silent Crow News

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***

US Vice President Kamala Harris stated, in an interview with CBS, that American troops shall not be sent to Gaza or Israel and that Washington is merely providing Tel Aviv with diplomatic support, equipment, and some advice. She added that the “US is not telling Israel what to do.”

However, it’s been reported that both the Jewish state and the United States are discussing a multinational force to “govern Gaza” if Tel Aviv succeeds in ousting Hamas. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority (PA) should retake control of Gaza in this scenario, but a peacekeeping force including American soldiers could play an “interim role”. There are at least two problems with this plan: Israel has been bombing not just Gaza, but also the PA-controlled West Bank, where Hamas has no presence, and the deployment of US troops to Palestine would only dramatically escalate frictions in the Middle East.

On 31 October, FBI director Christopher Wray, during a Congressional hearing, said that the escalation of tensions there is to inspire the greatest terror threat to the US since the rise of the so-called Islamic State (Daesh) terrorist group a decade ago. The turmoil in that part of the world has certainly raised the question of how many wars the US can fight and how many wars it can support.

Lawmakers in Washington seeking a ceasefire are increasingly concerned about US President Joe Biden’s full support for Israel’s military campaign and blockage there. They are not the only ones: American diplomats are reportedly preparing a “dissent cable”, in a situation that some have described as a “mutiny” brewing within the State Department “at all levels”. Amid such a context, Jack Lew has been approved as the next American envoy to Israel, his confirmation certainly having been fast-tracked by the current crisis. Having been nominated in September, it was then believed he could play a major role in US-brokered Israeli-Saudi talks about normalizing ties between the two Middle Eastern countries – a scenario that has been put in the freezer after the ongoing quagmire broke out. Lew’s mission now will focus on cooperating with Tel Aviv to neutralize Hamas, and securing the release of hostages, while suffering pressures to occasionally criticize some Israeli actions – the Jewish state’s campaign after all is being globally denounced over its indiscriminate targeting of civilian facilities and villages.

UN chief Antonio Guterres has recently voiced his dismay by the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, and organizations such as Amnesty International have described Israel’s actions as war crimes. Tel Aviv already faces increased hostility in Armenia due to its role in the Turkey-backed Azerbaijan ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), and is now itself being accused of conducting a genocide by a UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory, among others. Chile, and Colombia have recalled ambassadors to Israel, with Bolivia cutting ties entirely, and massive demonstrations against Tel Aviv are taking place in many capital cities worldwide.

Last year, I wrote on the possibility of an Iran-Israel war coming into being, a scenario that now seems much closer, bringing with it the specter of a wider Middle Eastern war. It has been speculated Iran could have assisted Hamas in planning its attack against the Jewish state on October 7 (the event which prompted Tel Aviv’s retaliatory campaign), even though both American and Israeli officials have stated that thus far there is no evidence whatsoever to that. In any case, there is much talk about an escalation of the ongoing crisis in Palestine spreading into the wider Middle East area. Unrelatedly, the Pentagon confirmed on Monday that Washington struck two facilities in Syria supposedly linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. On October 31, US defense officials said that American military bases in both Iraq and Syria have been attacked no less than 23 times over the past couple of weeks by Iran-backed groups.

Matthew Kroenig, a Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security vice president, has stated Washington needs “a two-major-theater planning construct”, possibly also covering Iran. He and his colleagues on the bipartisan Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States recommended just that to Congress earlier this month. Kroenig says the US needs to “deter and, if necessary, defeat major conflicts in the three most important geostrategic regions of the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East.” The question is: how many wars can the US fight? Andrew A. Michta, a Scowcroft Strategy Initiative director (at the Atlantic Council of the US) writes that Washington, with its “all-volunteer” force model is simply not ready for a war against great powers, “permanent stationing” in both Asia and Europe being needed.

A largely overburdened United States had been shifting its strategic interest away from the Middle East towards Eastern Europe (plus Central Asia) and the Indo-Pacific, even while its naval supremacy seems to be coming to an end. However, as I wrote, in June, the US cannot simply “leave” the Middle East, it being a center of petrodollars and oil, not to mention its cultural significance. This is the dilemma an ever overstretched supower now faces. Some analysts, such as Kroenig and Michta, seem to want it all, with American politicians talking about deploying Special Forces to neighboring Mexico too over a national drug calamity, even as the superpower, short of recruits, faces a military crisis.

Washington’s eager support to Tel Aviv’s current administration (facing heavy criticism globally), for one thing, highlights the hypocrisy about the US most vocal condemnation plus an unprecedented sanctioning campaign of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine which started on 24 February 2022. Notwithstanding any criticism one might make of Moscow in this case, not even the most vocal critics have ever come close to describing it as a genocide of ethnic Ukranians; in fact, on February 22, two days before today’s confrontation broke out, an El Pais piece detailed the humanitarian catastrophe in Donbass, brought about about by Kiev, not Moscow.

On February 24, CNN reported that Ukrainian forces had “destroyed” a vast part of the region, with schools and orphanages evacuated under Ukrainian shelling, causing lots of Donbass residents to seek refuge in the Rostov Oblast (Russian Federation). The Ukrainian military campaign against the Donbass region started in April 2014, amid chauvinistic policies against Russian-speaking populations. This (plus years of US-led NATO expansion and the rise of the far-right in Ukraine) provided the context for today’s conflict.

Be it as it may, American hopes for a victory in its proxy attrition war in Ukraine are now low, and Israel is now in the spotlight. The Jewish State is increasingly isolated internationally, though, and the costs of American full support of it shall keep rising.

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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

Trudeau’s New Sympathetic Tone on Gaza Won’t Avert Genocide

November 3rd, 2023 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East

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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) warns that Trudeau’s more “sympathetic” tone toward the death of Palestinian civilians in Gaza will do nothing to avert mass atrocities and Israel’s genocidal violence. On November 1, Prime Minister Trudeau claims to have met with Palestinian families and made three separate comments expressing the idea that the price of justice cannot be the continued suffering of Palestinian civilians. However, CJPME strenuously emphasizes that Trudeau still refuses to join the international community in calling for an immediate stop to Israel’s bombardment, making his words ring hollow. And even if Canada calls for an end to the bombing, it will have done nothing materially – like embargoing arms to Israel – to prevent it from continuing.

“Prime Minister Trudeau’s words of concern for the suffering of Palestinian civilians are the typical performative expressions, lacking real action, that we have come to expect from this Government. It just feels like an attempt to diffuse popular opposition to their failed policies,” said Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME. “Until Trudeau calls for a ceasefire and bans military trade with Israel, Canada will continue to be complicit in the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza and the slaughter of thousands of Palestinian children,” added Woodley.

Dozens of Members of Parliament, over 150 Canadian civil society organizations, and every single recipient of Canada’s humanitarian aid to Gaza have urged Trudeau to demand an immediate cessation of hostilities. A recent letter to Trudeau from the entire NDP caucus claims to have received emails from over 100,000 Canadians urging a ceasefire. Despite this, Trudeau has continued to call for “humanitarian pauses,” a demand which is deeply inadequate.

Trudeau also says that he spoke with Palestinian families about the importance of “their right to advocate, without fear of reprisal, for Palestinians to live in peace and security.” However, CJPME notes that Trudeau has recently condemned pro-Palestine rallies which he falsely portrayed as pro-Hamas. While in power, his government has opposed all efforts by Palestinians to access justice through non-violent means, whether through the movement to boycott Israel, the United Nations General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, or the International Criminal Court.

“The Prime Minister’s reputation proceeds him. In the face of over 10,000 deaths in this conflict we are exhausted by Trudeau’s empty words of concern,” said Woodley. “Palestinian children are being slaughtered and Israel is trying to expel all Gazans to Egypt. Trudeau needs to take responsibility to protect them and stop ethnic cleansing.”

More than 9,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza since October 7, including 3,760 children. Israel’s “total siege” has restricted access to food, water, electricity, fuel, and medicine in the territory, bringing the healthcare system to the point of collapse. The combination of Israel’s mass killing of civilians, the denial of basic essentials for life, and dehumanizing statements from officials, increasingly raises the alarming prospect of “genocide” according to UN human rights experts, Palestinian NGOs, a former ICC prosecutor, and more than 800 scholars in international law and genocide studies.

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Occidente ante la masacre en Gaza

November 3rd, 2023 by Olga Rodríguez

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***

Oleksii Arestovych, Volodymyr Zelensky’s former chief of staff, described the Ukrainian president as a “dictator” who has become “divorced from reality” in relation to the way he has reacted to the Russian special military operation since it began in February 2022.

“First, someone behaves like a dictator and, instead of following the normal path of accelerated development, chooses stagnation. Then someone breeds massive corruption. Then someone breeds hatred for any opinion different from their own. And then – a year and a half later – autumn comes, both in relations with the West and with our own people. And no matter how much you deny reality, it doesn’t go away,” said the former advisor on X (formerly Twitter).

Arestovych made his post in response to an article in Time magazine, written by correspondent Simon Shuster, which addresses the isolation of the Ukrainian leader and is entitled, “Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody.” For him, the article reveals an “unpleasant and vaguely familiar image – a dictator abandoned by everyone, wandering through the back streets of the bunker, unwilling to face reality and hysterically exclaiming about a quick victory, which he is unable to achieve.”

“An authoritarian leader to whom those around him are afraid to tell the truth,” he continued. “All dictators who are divorced (in the name of their fantasy) from reality end up the same way.”

According to the Times article published on October 30, Zelensky “feels betrayed” by his Western allies because “they have left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it.”

“The scariest thing is that part of the world got used to the war in Ukraine,” Zelensky told Shuster. “Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe. And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them: ‘I can’t watch this rerun for the 10th time.’”

He also stated that Kiev is firmly opposed to any ceasefire. This position has been criticised even by Ukrainian military leaders, who admit failure in the much-touted summer counteroffensive. The situation is so desperate for Ukraine that the country can no longer assemble the same well-prepared army it had assembled before launching the counteroffensive at the beginning of the European summer, let alone what it had before the start of the Russian military operation.

Concluding his tweet, Arestovych said that the Times article “condemns Zelensky to loneliness and the judgment of history – to loneliness, for which he has no one to blame but himself.”

Although much attention following the publication of the Times article has been given to the fact that Ukraine is becoming increasingly isolated, especially since the start of the Middle East crisis, overlooked was the revelation that the average age of a soldier in Ukraine is around 43 years, demonstrating just how crippled the Ukrainian Armed Forced are.

According to Shuster, the Russian special military operation has “eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years.”

“They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” Shuster cited a close aide to Zelensky as saying. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.”

According to the article, Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces reportedly accepted 100,000 new recruits in the first ten days of the all-out war, showing how confident people were, which was partly fuelled by senior officials audaciously making optimistic predictions that the war would be won in only a few months.

“Many people thought they could sign up for a quick tour and take part in a heroic victory,” said a second member of Zelensky’s team to the Times correspondent.

However, with revelations that Ukraine is suffering catastrophic losses, with more than 90,000 casualties since the spring offensive, according to Moscow, recruitment is way down. This has intensified conscription efforts, so much so that Zelensky’s dictatorial tendencies are seen with draft officers illegally pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front.

Arestovych’s latest outburst against Zelensky has only fuelled rumours about his own political aspirations despite his frequent assurances that he would not run for president if Zelensky does.

It is recalled that Arestovych was forced to resign as senior adviser to the president in January 2023 after his statement on a YouTube programme that Ukraine’s air defence forces shot down the missile that destroyed part of a house in Dnipro, then fell on a high-rise building and exploded, something which countered the official narrative of the Kiev regime. Since then, he has been in political battles with the ruling elite of Kiev, as demonstrated by his pointing out that Zelensky is a dictator.

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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: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivers an address in Kiev, Ukraine, April 15, 2022. (Credit: Ukrainian Presidency)

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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We are witnessing by any and all accounts a massive massacre of Palestinian civilians who for the past 16 years have been imprisoned on the Gaza Strip – blockaded and controlled by Israel. This massacre is being carried out as if ordained in the Old Testament. This stems from the conviction on the part of the very influential, fundamentalist part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition in some God-given right to occupy and control “Greater Israel,” which includes all of Palestine.   

Netanyahu was recently recorded citing 1 Samuel 15:3 in a clip that has gone viral.

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

Victims of this massacre are the direct descendants of the Palestinians forcibly expelled from their homes upon the creation of Israel in 1948, the deadly expulsion known as the Nakba. The next stage is described in Jimmy Carter’s book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid published in 2007. From Amazon’s book review:  

“Pulling no punches, Carter prescribes steps that must be taken for the two states to share the Holy Land without a system of apartheid or the constant fear of terrorism. 

“The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known, the president writes. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key UN resolutions, official American policy, and the international ‘road map’ for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel’s official pre-1967 borders must be honored.” 

There have been more than 80 resolutions passed by the U.N. Security Council or the U.N. General Assembly against Israeli policy, most of them close to unanimous, many of them condemning Israel’s disregard of the pre-1967 borders by encroachments in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  

For example, on Dec. 14, 2022, the General Assembly passed 159 to 8 a resolution directed against “the widespread destruction caused by Israel, the occupying Power, to vital infrastructure, including water pipelines, sewage networks and electricity networks, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in particular in the Gaza Strip …” and calls upon Israel “to cease its demolition and confiscation of Palestinian homes, agricultural lands and water wells … particularly Israeli settlement activities …” The current settler movement with the support of the Israeli government continues to forcibly expel Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank (they have lived there for generations) over the objection even of President Biden.  

Israel’s current alternative to the two-state solution amounts to a Final Solution – all Palestinians either expelled or murdered. 

I deplore terrorism. I do not know the extent of the terrorism perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7. Practically the first thing we heard was the hoax that Hamas had decapitated 40 babies. This was claimed by the Israeli government and rapidly adopted by President Biden who lied when he said he had seen an authenticated photo of this.

Surfaced now in Israeli media are accounts of Israeli survivors of the Oct. 7 attacks in which they testify that they were treated “humanely” by Hamas and that many of the Israeli victims were killed in Israeli crossfire.  An Israeli survivor named Yasmin Porat, referring to Israeli special forces: “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages.” 

Tuval Escapa, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz:

“The commanders in the field made difficult decisions – including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”

A separate report published in Haaretz noted that the Israeli military on Oct. 7 was

“compelled to request an aerial strike” against its own facility filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza “in order to repulse the terrorists.”    

The Israeli government claims 1400 Israelis died on Oct. 7, the figure repeated by the Associated Press on a daily basis. This number has yet to be substantiated. No matter how accurate this number, and no matter how many of these deaths were caused by Hamas or Israeli crossfire, this cannot possibly justify or excuse genocide. 

The Associated Press daily refers to the attack of Oct. 7 as “brutal,” but never thus describes the ongoing relentless bombardment of Gaza. 

More on terrorism: Is dropping one-ton bombs on a civilian population literally trapped in the Gaza Strip, half of them children, on hospitals, mosques, schools, United Nations refugee shelters, residential blocks — is that also terrorism? “Terrorist” is a slur that the big army uses to describe the little army.  

More on terrorism: Israel’s founding fathers, its national heroes, many later elected to the position of Prime Minister, were terrorists.  

Image: Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres joined the Haganah in 1947, the militia primarily responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages in 1947-49, during the Nakba. From Time Magazine on Peres: “His whole history was devoted to establishing and then developing a state founded on dispossession and the ethnic cleansing of [the Palestinians].” Peres was elected Prime Minister from 1984 to 1986 and from 1995 to 1996, as well as President from 2007 to 2014.   

Image: Menachem Begin  

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Menachem Begin was the leader of the Irgun, a para-military force that carried out the 1946 terrorist attack on The King David Hotel in which 91 were killed as well as the 1948 Deir Yassin Massacre that wiped out an Arab-populated town, killing over 100 people including women and children. The British put Begin on top of their most-wanted list of terrorists. Begin was elected Prime Minister from 1977 to 1983. 

Image: Yitzhak Shamir

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Yitzhak Shamir was the leader of Lehi, a terrorist group also known as the “Stern Gang,” which joined with Begin’s Irgun to perpetrate the Deir Yassin Massacre. Shamir was elected Prime Minister from 1986 to 1992. 

Image: Ariel Sharon

Ariel Sharon orchestrated the 1953 massacre of 69 Palestinian civilians in Qibya, mostly women and children, while leading “Unit 101,” an infamous Israeli army unit. In 1982, Sharon led the invasion of Lebanon, shelling and besieging Beirut. It was during this campaign that Sharon invited the Lebanese Phalange militia into the refugee camps known as Sabra and Shatila on the outskirts of Beirut, resulting in the massacre of approximately 3,000 Palestinian and Lebanese men, women and children. In 2000, Sharon led a phalanx of more than 1000 troops in a desecration of the al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, Islam’s third holiest site, thus provoking the Second Intifada. According to the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, this led into ten years of conflict in which “Israeli security forces killed 6371 Palestinians, of whom 1317 were minors,” while “Palestinians killed 1083 Israelis … of whom 124 were minors.” Sharon was elected Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006. 

It was the 2023 Israeli desecration of this same al-Aqsa mosque which precipitated the Hamas attack of Oct. 7 named Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.

Image: Ehud Barak

In 1998, Ehud Barak, former Israeli special forces commando, Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, stated: “If I were a Palestinian of the right age, I would join, at some point, one of the terrorist groups.” Barak was elected Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001.  

In the above-mentioned votes on U.N. resolutions condemning Israeli policy, the United States generally is one of very few countries that votes with Israel. (Similarly, in votes condemning the U.S. blockade of Cuba, Israel joins with the U.S. in opposition. For example, in November, 2022, when the U.N. for the thirtieth time passed a resolution condemning this embargo, 185 countries voted in favor, with only the U.S. and Israel opposed.) 

On Oct. 27, 2023, 120 countries passed a U.N. resolution calling for “an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” and the demand for “the immediate, continuous, sufficient and unhindered provision of essential goods and services to civilians throughout the Gaza Strip, including but not limited to water, food, medical supplies, fuel and electricity,” and “stresses the need to urgently establish a mechanism to ensure the protection of the Palestinian civilian population” and “reaffirms that a just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be achieved … on the basis of the two-State solution.”   

Meanwhile, the U.S. with a massive deployment of military force in the Mediterranean is now serving to protect Israel from any interference in its ongoing perpetration of genocide, daring anyone to intervene. 

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Barry Kissin is a retired attorney, dedicated peace activist and columnist who resides in Frederick, Maryland, home of Fort Detrick, headquarters of the American biodefense/bioweapons program. He is regularly published in his local newspaper, The Frederick News-Post, as well as in alternative media, including Global Research, Consortium News, Op-ed News and International Clearing House.

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Cratered ground and destroyed lives: piecing together the Jabalia camp airstrike

Excerpts from The Guardian article

On Tuesday afternoon, rescuers combed with their hands through surface layers of a tangled mass of concrete and steel, which hours earlier had been homes in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza.

They were searching for survivors, or the bodies of victims, which the immense force of an Israeli airstrike had left near the surface. Those trapped deeper may be entombed for months.

After more than three weeks of intense bombardment of Gaza, heavy machinery can no longer reach bomb sites down damaged roads, and people on the ground say fuel to operate machines is running out.

Even so, body bags piled up with horrific speed at the morgue of the nearby Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, and then outside the building. The wounded filled its beds or were raced to Dar al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where medics from the Médicins Sans Frontiers aid group struggled to find space even for badly injured children.

“Young children arrived at the hospital with deep wounds and severe burns. They came without their families,” said Mohammed Hawajreh, an MSF nurse who was quoted by the organisation in a statement condemning the attack.

“Many were screaming and asking for their parents. I stayed with them until we could find a place, as the hospital was full with patients.”

On Wednesday night, a Hamas-run government media office said at least 195 Palestinians had been killed in two rounds of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Earlier, the surgical director of the Indonesian hospital, Mohamed el-Ron, told the BBC it received 400 casualties, including 120 dead, and the majority were women and children. Several of the most severely wounded were transferred to the Al-Shifa hospital “under fire”, he added.

The pulverising attack on Jabalia came as Israeli ground troops pushed into Gaza from at least three directions. A spokesman for the Israeli military said the attack had been authorised to assassinate a senior Hamas commander and destroy his base.

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari named the target as Ibrahim Biari, commander of Central Jabaliya Battalion, who he said had been leading fighting in northern Gaza from a network of tunnels under the camp.

Click here to read the full article on The Guardian.

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Featured image: A view from the area after Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, on October 31, 2023. [Stringer – Anadolu Agency]

The Palestinian Story Is Much Older Than October 7

November 2nd, 2023 by Najeh Shahin

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Criag Mokhiber, a top official from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in his resignation letter dated 28 October asserts:

“As a human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units. Across the land, Apartheid rules.

This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault.”

Let us read the roots of this text-book chapter of atrocities which goes far before the 7th of October. Israel has successfully killed more than 10,000 innocent people in Gaza including around 3,500 children. Targeting houses and big buildings including hospitals and schools has been key to achieve this impressive number of loss of lives in three weeks.

You know Israel is fighting to defend itself against the terror of Hamas who has not approved the almighty potent Israel will to take over all the Palestinian land and transfer the remaining of the Palestinian people whom Ben Gurion had somehow failed to expel in the 1948 independence war or the Nakba of Palestine which witnessed a smart ethnic cleansing of the peaceful people of Palestine with Israel grabbing around 80 percent of mandate Palestine.

Palestine was cleansed in 1948, Israeli neo-historians were among the first to assert this very simple fact: massacres, force, and intimidation were the means to achieve that historic accomplishment. After two decades Israel captured the rest of Palestine, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip which stands for barely the fifth of the land of Palestine. Gradually the Palestinian national liberation movement, the PLO, was convinced that “realistic” solution of giving up the 1948 land and establishing a state on the 1967 borders is a viable solution. However, Israel has never been on the same page. After the Oslo agreement, the Israelis became more decided to carry out a new cunning and patient ethnic cleansing in the West Bank if not in Gaza as well.

The Israelis were convinced that peace and love were going to prevail giving them all necessary time needed to accomplish their cleansing plan. That has been the scenario in the wishful thinking of Israel and the U.S. Unfortunately history has proved that it’s more cunning than that and the story would produce another plot of its own and then, only then, Americans as well as Israelis probably would remember that they would produce another smart and revolutionary Hezbollah in Palestine. Their arms and financial support to the PA in Ramallah have been only undermining the little credibility that it had in the beginning, changing it into completely traitor gangsters in the eyes of the Palestinian people. But let us forget about all this and try to read some history.

American mainstream politics does not like talking about the past. They prefer always to start from the “here and now”, but who can blame them?

When everybody knows that this would entail starting that entire boring story about how they conducted a fabulous genocide war against the native people then imported a few millions from Africa to be enslaved at the temple of American unbelievable heavens of democracy. How could any reasonable man expect America’s politics to fall in love with historical studies?

However, there is no choice. When you face Arabs – a stupid Semitic people – there is no way to avoid history. They would permanently ask for some historical evidence to support your argument or claim…etc. That’s why –perhaps- Moshe Dayan made use of his leisure time to develop his talents as an archeologist. With Arabs you need some narration. And here the narration goes back to some 700 years before Christ when there were some small cities all over greater Syria which were inhabited by the Canaanite people. Some of the Canaanite people would go to Iraq through the Assyrian wars and there they would stay for almost two centuries. When the Persian Empire conquered Iraq, those Canaanites would be converted into monotheism, and they would be sent back to Palestine as a different people. They are the proxy of the Persian Empire’s interest in the area. There had been empires long ago before Columbus arrived in what is now known as the Americas.

In general the Canaanites of Syria had to become gradually Arabs. It’s only those who went to Iraq who developed a new identity as Jews. And that sect had never had any problems with its native brothers.

However, it suffered with foreigners like the Romans and the Crusades. When the Arabs were defeated in Spain in the late decades of the fifteen century, the Spanish started their bloody party with the Arabs and the (Arab) Jews before turning towards the new world to practice the worst genocide and holocaust in history. In less than a century they reduced the population of the “Americas” by more than 90%, almost a hundred million had been killed.

One need not be smart to tell how “different” peoples were treated by the Europeans in the medieval and modern times. The Jews suffered through that history as or even worse than anybody taken to be a heretic or a Muslim or a latin Averroesist. There was no chance for assimilation. Despite the fact that they were citizens of modern Europe, this sadly could make no difference. Just look at these heavens of democracy and see how “others” have been treated, even long before 9/11. They were saved there for the justification of bad luck with nature or God or economy. Human beings in their mythological eras need some “magical” and “supernatural” interpretation of their suffering and the Jews were very appropriate for that ideological/psychological job.

Napoleon had the merit of finding some “business” for the Jews. Why not use them in the war against Britain? He brought the idea of the Jews establishing their state in their promised land Palestine. But Napoleon fell sooner than he thought. And that idea had to wait till India became so important for the British imperialist activities in the 19th century. The British capitalism is indebted to India more than anything else in the “hegemonic” position that it achieved in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In the context of the invasion of Egypt and later Palestine itself at the end of the First World War (1917), Great Britain adopted Napoleon’s idea. And then the application of the idea did not take more than thirty years. By 1949 Palestine was almost cleansed –to use the term used nowadays by most historians including prominent Israeli historians like Ilan Pappe- and Israel was established on 80% percent of the land of Palestine. And in 1967 Israel in a lightening and fascinating war defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, and so captured a lot of the Arab land including the remaining 20% of Palestine.

Israel did its best since that time to create a situation where there would be nothing called Palestine for Palestinians to claim. When it ran short of Jewish immigration in the last two decades it started to “import” all sorts of “white” people including Russian Orthodox Christian. Some researchers think that a million of them had immigrated to Israel in the 1990s.

Now the Palestinian Arabs- unluckily- are still wandering in the neighborhood. They have not disappeared, which make the story a little bit more complicated than that of the Native American people –the red Indians.

And despite many similarities, history does not look like repeating itself. At the moment the Palestinians are asking for only 22% of their land which was left in 1948. Personally, I think that the best thing for both sides is a one state for Palestinians and white European Israelis. However, Israel is still thinking that there is some hope for some ways –massacres, cleansing, transference, etc. to get rid of the Palestinians completely. This is of course possible, but there is also another possibility that the U.S. loses its powerful hegemonic position or losing its interest in the Middle East after oil withers away and then Israel would not be in the same situation of dominating Arabs and Palestinians so easily.

That’s why I think it’s even in the interest of Israel to give up its racist identity and practices, and to try to be assimilated in the area as part of the Arab world. Being a European white man’s colony is not in favor of the interests of Israel if it hopes to be a normal part of that region of the world. The problem is that the elites in Tel Aviv are now more than any time in the past seeing themselves as superior white people. I do not think this identification with European supremacy is going to be particularly helpful in the common life in this little land. However, this is another story that needs some independent treatment.

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Najeh Shahin is a Palestinian writer based in Ramallah, Occupied Palestine.

Israel’s Big Lie of “Self-Defence”

November 2nd, 2023 by Kieran Kelly

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Is the mass slaughter of civilians self-defence?

Every person has the right to life and to self-defence, but Israel’s “right to self-defence” is constantly being used to obfuscate the non-defensive nature of its military violence in Palestinian territory.

Israel’s self-defence is a lie, not just because their actions are not defensive but because Israel cannot legally use its military in self-defence against Palestinians.

Let me repeat that, Israel cannot legally use its military against Palestinians in self-defence. That is the big lie at the heart of the current horrors.

There are four reasons why Israel cannot cite a legal right to self-defence in response to Palestinian violence.

First and foremost is that the ability of a very strong military power to achieve anything defensive by the attrition of a much weaker military power is spurious and leads into the genocidal logic of attempting to deprive a people of all capacity for violence.

The second reason is that Israel is actively contravening UN Security Council resolutions and the UN Charter is very clear on the fact that the right to self-defence exists “until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” A state that works to thwart UNSC measures to maintain peace and security cannot logically be extended the unimpaired right to self defence.

On the third count Israel is an occupying power and the occupied have a legal right to armed resistance. It would be nonsensical to accord a legal right to use arms to defend against another’s legal resistance.

Fourthly, it would be equally paradoxical to allow each party to act in self-defence against each other’s acts of self defence. Thus one of the parties must be the aggressor. On several counts, not least its defiance of UNSC resolutions, Israel must be considered the aggressor.

File photo of illegal Israeli settlements

Israel’s only legitimate way of defending itself begins with ending its occupation. Israelis have a right to life and they deserve peace and security as we all do, but they have no right to kill Palestinians and claim that they are pursuing those things.

Before tackling the specifics we should question the general validity of military violence as a form of self-defence.

At this time hundreds of people are killed by Israel everyday under the pretext of seeking to render Hamas 100% ineffective. This is a tacit claim of self-defence linked to the notion that Hamas is an ongoing source of potential violence to Israelis. However it is hard to reconcile this rationale with the actualities when one sees a parade of children’s corpses.

One body after another with the increasingly familiar pall of concrete dust on their lifeless faces. Thinking of all of that pain, fear and suffering should make it impossible to somehow see killing those children as an act of self-defence.

The human instinct to reject this monstrosity is not mere sentimentality. It would be impossible to make a sound detailed argument to show how the killing of any one of these children contributed materially to the increased security of Israelis. In truth it is far easier to argue that each dead Palestinian child makes Israeli people less secure.

Israel relies on broad and vague notions of “self-defence” to enact mass violence that does nothing to make any person safer and, in fact, is certain to cost the lives of many Israel personnel and any number of hostages.

Military violence can only achieve so much as no amount of attrition will deprive a people of all ability to commit violence in return short of extermination. Beyond a point violence becomes waged “not merely against states and their armies but against peoples.” These were the words that Raphäel Lemkin when he first described the concept of genocide. Military violence can be used in ways that can only be called “self-defence” through the logic of genocide that situates the threat within the people and their intrinsic capacity for violence (also known as resistance). This is not legitimate self-defence, yet it is clearly part of the racist thinking of some Israelis and their apologists elsewhere.

It is actually normal that the logic of genocide presents itself as self-defence. Consider this quote by Arnon Soffer, the pre-eminent alarmist in Israel over the “demographic” threat of Palestinians:

When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today … The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day … the only thing that concerns me is how to ensure the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.”

This is the reasoning of someone who has no concern for military power, who will never accept Israel’s overwhelming military might and nuclear deterrent as a sufficient lever ensure that Israel can be secure in a time of peace. These words are shockingly Himmleresque in labelling a people animals; in stating that mass killing is neither choice nor desire, but necessity; and in the sickening concern that mass killing might cause psychological harm to Israeli personnel.

Adolf Eichmann and others at the Wannsee Conference shared Himmler’s fear of the effect of killing on the murderers and it was a major consideration in their adoption of the “Final Solution” which industrialised the mass-murder of Jews.

Soffer later explained:

“I didn’t recommend that we kill Palestinians. I said we’ll have to kill them. I was right about mounting demographic pressures. I am also entitled to defend myself and my country.”

It is difficult to imagine any Israeli getting closer to Nazi rhetoric than this, but it says something that his ideas were not immediately denounced by everyone in Israel for what they are. This is the essence of genocide. Though referencing the circumstances in Gaza, he is openly saying that Palestinians must be killed because they are Palestinians.

In contrast to genocidal notions, the theory behind using military power in self-defence draws on the idea that warfare is a contestation of belligerents using violence in a manner, as Clausewitz suggested, of wrestlers: “Each strives by physical force to compel the other to submit to his will….” This begins from the presupposition that each belligerent has diametrically opposed aims, which might have sufficed in the 19th century, but does not suit our more complex polities today.

In reality, war is not a chess game and killing babies is not in any way the same as taking a pawn from the board, yet the use of aerial and ground artillery on populated areas implies that this brutal madness makes sense. We are tricked by the notion that the “self-defence” of nations is truly analogous to the self-defence of an individual using a weapon to counter an assailant. That analogy breaks down in an era of high-tech weaponry and in circumstances of asymmetry where the strong are killing the weak. Leaders and pundits often twist the notion of asymmetry itself to suggest that the strong are more vulnerable to the weak and are thus the real victims, but this is just one of those lies that are repeated so constantly that it becomes a commonplace.

Despite the clear disproportionate asymmetry of violence and the ever-growing numbers of people killed by Israel the media discourse enforces a framework that decontextualises Israeli violence, presenting it as a reaction to the violence of Hamas.

Pro-Palestinian and pro-peace interviewees on Western media cannot speak without first making pronouncements affirming that they condemn Hamas’ “terrorist” violence and affirming Israel’s “right to defend itself”. These statements function as “thought-terminating clichés”, though in such instances they might be more aptly called “thought-terminating pieties”. Pieties go beyond mere clichés to invoke moralistic religious, patriotic, or other emotive ideological beliefs that create both a dominant sentiment as well as a constrictive framework of discourse. They close off certain avenues of speech, so that those who speak for Palestinians must begin by stating that Israel has a legal and moral right to kill Palestinians, and then take the stance of a supplicant begging for moderation, clemency, or mercy.

Of late Palestinians and others have pushed back against the pressure to commence their testimony and commentary with a condemnation of Hamas. They are trying to evade a narrative in which events commence with a condemnable act by Hamas and thus Israel’s massive surge of killing and destruction is framed as a reaction to Palestinian violence. This framework decontextualises events from the occupation and oppression including the ongoing acts of killing and destruction which Israeli personnel enact every single day in Palestine.

The “self-defence” argument is even more insidious than the attempt to frame all Israeli military violence as being in reaction to “terrorism”. It relies on a persistent but unrecognised one-sidedness. One cannot deny the right for Israelis to defend their lives, but nor can one deny the right of Palestinians to defend their lives. If Israel can kill Palestinian civilians in “self-defence” and present its own reasons to explain why such killings are necessary, then logic dictates that Hamas can do the exactly the same. Thus it may seem that if applied even-handedly “self-defence” becomes totally meaningless.

It may surprise people to know that in legal terms the problem of self-defence is not tricky nor intractable. Israel very clearly does not have the right to use military violence and claim self-defence on several grounds. Firstly, an occupied people has the right to resistance, including armed resistance, “in or outside their own territory”. Obviously it would be illogical to accord a legal right to armed resistance and then accord a legal right to collective self-defence against that legal resistance.

Thankfully the United Nations Charter has a way out of the paradoxes of allowing two belligerents the right to self-defence against each other’s self-defence and that of allowing self-defence against legal acts of resistance. Chapter VII of Article 51 states

“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

Clearly “peace and security” has not been established but the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has passed many resolutions on Palestine. Israel is currently violating a very large number of these resolutions ranging at least as far back as UNSCR 242 in 1967 through to UNSCR 2334 in 2016. These violations are occurring despite the fact that the US constantly vetoes UNSC resolutions that it deems detrimental to Israel. Logically cannot claim a legal right to self-defence if it violates the UNSC resolutions designed to bring “peace and security” thus its real path to legitimate self-defence lies first and foremost in complying with all relevant resolutions. In simple terms Israel must end its occupation as the very first of any acts of self-defence. Thus it does have the right to self defence but it must cease its own belligerency first.

I want to complicate this further here, but in a way that will lead to greater elegance and certainty, by explaining the onus on the aggressor. In 1946 the International Military Tribunal described waging a war of aggression as “the supreme international crime” that “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Placing the onus on the aggressor (which is the government of the state not its people) in this way does not exonerate those who commit crimes in self-defence, but it means that the aggressor is also guilty. It is only thus that we can preserve the principle that all people have the right to life. Without the aggressor being morally and legally culpable it would mean not only that the military personnel of the aggressor belligerent have no right to life, but also that civilians of that state have no right to life if they should become legitimate collateral damage in legal military operations by the defending belligerent. This emphasis on the culpability of the aggressor is very satisfying because it closes these loopholes and also satisfies our moral instinct that a sovereign that wages aggressive war, knowingly sacrificing the lives of their own people, is guilty of the murder of those killed.

Gaza, 2023 (Source: Trong Khiem Nguyen Flickr)

We need to pause here to reflect on our habitual callousness towards death in times of conflict. Death in wartime is so inevitable that we become inured to to its nature. Deaths caused by armed conflict tend to be terrifying, agonising, lonely, and brutally untimely. The grief of needless loss over those who usually have health and life to spare is not lessened because death becomes so statistical when the machinery of killing is unleashed. War is an abomination and every person who is currently working to prevent a ceasefire in Gaza is a criminal.

As things currently stand Israel has such a grip on the framing of the Western media coverage that it can get away with claiming its murders in Gaza are all part of a campaign to eradicate Hamas and that this is a legitimate act of self-defence.

Of course, anyone who goes beyond the Western media (Al Jazeera being the easiest outlet to escape the censored narrative) will know that Israel is targeting civilians, hospitals, churches, ambulances, and so forth.

For those who see only the Western media they must deal with the cognitive dissonance of seeing the death, destruction, and suffering and being told that it is arguably some form of self-defence. The trick with the Western media is not to state outright that Israel’s self-defence claims are true, but to avoid all facts or basic reasoning that gives lie to that claim.

Once those who support peace and humanity learn to counter Israel’s claims to the right to use violence in “self-defence” it will be another foundation of the propaganda narrative removed. Brave individuals are challenging the demand to begin all media interviews by condemning Hamas and refusing to accept timelines that always assert that cycles of violence begin with Palestinian actions. They need to add to that by rejecting Israel’s right to use arms in self-defence.

The way to counter the distortions of the Western media is to attack the borders of the narrative where they are thinnest and most strained. Some ideas are the sledgehammers that break through walls of cognitive dissonance, forcing people to unite what their eyes see and what their emotional and moral senses tell them with their intellectual framework – the story that they force facts and feelings into. When people see bombing, missiles and siege warfare against a powerless people the imagery does not naturally lend itself to a conclusion of violence waged for defensive purposes. To break the argument we need to attack the very validity of Israel’s claims.

An occupier cannot use arms in self-defence until they cease being the occupier.

The aggressor cannot be the defender.

Genocide is never justified. The violence of those who see others as a threat because of their membership in a “national, ethnical, racial or religious group” is the defining character of genocide. It is always framed as self-defence.

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Kieran KellyOn Genocide; @keiyarkelly 

Featured image is from Jewish Voice for Labour

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Since November 1, western-based media outlets have spent considerable time focusing on the events surrounding the limited openings of the Rafah Crossing on the border between the southern Gaza Strip and Egypt.

Since the beginning of Operation Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7, the State of Israel has pledged to eliminate the Hamas resistance movement from Gaza which has been designated as the most densely populated area in the world.

In addition to the characterization of high density, Gaza has been labelled as the largest open-air prison in the world. These circumstances are not the result of decisions made by the Palestinian people or of neighboring Egypt. These draconian conditions emanate from the domestic and foreign policies imposed on the Palestinians by Tel Aviv along with their backers in the United States and their allies. 

The blanket bombing of Gaza over the last three-and-one-half weeks has been accompanied by the demands of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Palestinians to leave the northern region of the Strip and head towards the South. Such utterances have coincided with the aerial strikes on residential neighbors, refugee camps, hospitals, mosques, civilian convoys and churches which have killed nearly 9,000 people and injured tens of thousands more.

These attacks on the people of Gaza would be designated as war crimes by the United Nations if the U.S. and other imperialist states did not maintain veto power over the administrative conduct of the Security Council. The U.S. has consistently voted against all resolutions aimed at declaring an immediate ceasefire and the resumption of aid to meet the needs of the Palestinians in Gaza. Instead, the position of Washington is that Israel, a settler-colonial state, has the right to defend itself against the liberation movements among the Palestinians seeking to end the occupation and create an independent state. 

Obviously, the orders to evacuate and the targeted bombing of civilians, are designed to force the Palestinians out of Gaza and into Egypt. Many have described the current policy of the Israeli state and the U.S. as an attempt to initiate another Al Nakba (the catastrophe), where in 1948 after the recognition by the then United Nations of the State of Israel, at least 750, 000 Palestinians were forced from their homes.

Prior to the advent of the Camp David Accords of 1979, brokered by the U.S. administration of President Jimmy Carter, and signed by the then Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the North African state had played a leading role in supporting the liberation of Palestine and the halting of the expansionist imperatives of Tel Aviv. Although limited concessions were granted by Israel and its imperialist financiers such as the removal of Israeli troops out of the Sinai, the Zionists soon renewed the building of settlements for the Jewish population confiscating even more land than what had been taken during the wars of 1948 and 1967.

During the recent crisis, the Egyptian government has expressed reluctance to allow more than two million Palestinian refugees to cross over into its territory. There are sound reasons for this view on the part of Cairo. The removal of the Palestinian population from Gaza into Egypt would in essence liquidate the Camp David Accord. Even if the Palestinians were forced into Egypt they would continue to organize for the reclaiming of their historic homeland. Consequently, the Israeli Defense Forces would inevitably launch bombing operations and possibly ground incursions inside of Egypt against the Palestinians and their organizations.

African Union and Arab League Issues Joint Statement on Gaza Siege

In the aftermath of the wars cited above and the acquisition of independence by the majority of African states, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the African Union (AU), took a clear position in support of Palestine and other states which fell victim to the imperialist-instigated seizure of land by Israel. The African liberation movements formed solid alliances with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which was formed during the 1960s. 

A controversial decision in early 2022 which was soon suspended, where the AU Commission Chair, Moussa Faki Mahamat, granted the State of Israel observer status within continental organization, drew the ire of numerous governments. A debate over the decision at the next AU Summit threatened to split the continental body. Strong objections to Mahamat’s decision by Algeria and South Africa resulted in the maintenance of the existing status-quo where the State of Palestine would continue to enjoy its observer designation within the AU.

The Abraham Accords initiative fostered by the U.S. has also impacted AU member-states. The former U.S. President Donald Trump pressured then interim-Prime Minister of the Republic of Sudan, Abdalla Hamdok, to illegally recognize Tel Aviv in blatant violation of its own Israel Boycott Act of 1958. The Abraham Accords are designed to undermine international solidarity for the Palestinian movement by the signing of documents that purportedly give legitimacy to the settler-colonial project in Palestine. 

However, as a result of the offensive by the Palestinian resistance forces on October 7, the AU has issued two statements which condemn the actions of the State of Israel. The first AU statement was issued on October 7 saying:

“The Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union, Moussa Faki Mahamat, expresses his utmost concern at the outbreak of the current Israeli-Palestinian hostilities, causing grave consequences for the lives of Israeli and Palestinian civilians in particular, and for peace in the region, in general. The Chairperson wishes to recall that denial of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, particularly that of an independent and sovereign State, is the main cause of the permanent Israeli-Palestinian tension. The Chairperson urgently appeals to both parties to put an end to military hostilities and to return, without conditions, to the negotiating table to implement the principle of two States living side by side, to safeguard the interests of the Palestinian people and the Israeli people. The Chairperson further calls on the international community, and the major world powers in particular, to assume their responsibilities to impose peace and guarantee the rights of the two peoples.” 

Despite the mentioning of a “two-state solution”, the AU Commission Chair placed the onus of the conflict on the refusal of Israel and the U.S. to move towards a genuine political settlement to the Palestinian question.

The failure of the Oslo Accords of 1993 revealed clearly the unwillingness on the part of the Israeli state and successive U.S. administrations to allow an independent Palestinian state. 

The only real prospects for peace in Palestine center around the creation of a unitary state where full equality and self-determination for the Arab population would serve as its cornerstone. Under such a dispensation, all Palestinians and their descendants forced from the homeland since 1948 would be granted the “right of return” to fully participate in the internal politics of an independent and sovereign state. 

Later, on October 15, the AU and the League of Arab States issued a joint statement on the situation in Gaza. The statement read in part that:

“The General Secretariate of the League of Arab States (LAS) and the African Union Commission (AUC) call for the immediate cessation of hostilities in Gaza, and a concerted international effort to provide basic assistance and urgent humanitarian aid to 2.2 million Palestinians. Both organizations express grave concern over the Israeli order for more than one million Palestinians to leave their homes, contrary to international law. Therefore, they call on the United Nations and the international community to stop a catastrophe from unfolding in front of us, before it is too late. They both stressed the pressing need to avoid escalation, underscoring that an Israeli invasion would undoubtedly entail a huge number of civilian casualties, including women and children, which could lead to a genocide of unprecedented proportions. Calling on the international community to live up to the shared principles of humanity and justice, both LAS and AUC underscored the imperative of collective action to immediately prevent a protracted aggression against the Palestinians.” 

With specific reference to the Republic of South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa proposed the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force to Occupied Palestine as a measure to potentially calm the current crisis. However, such a force would not be effective particularly considering the disproportionate influence of the U.S. within the framework of the UN. 

On a mass level, there is overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause among the peoples of Africa, Asia and throughout the world. The political implications of this solidarity even inside the imperialist states carries the potential for upending the unconditional support for Tel Aviv among its staunchest allies.   

During each week since the siege of Gaza began, millions continue to demonstrate in the streets for an immediate ceasefire and the liberation of Palestine. The increasing isolation of the U.S., its allies and the State of Israel related to the Palestinian question is a welcome development within the broader movement to end imperialist war throughout the globe.

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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

Last Month’s (October) Most Popular Articles

November 2nd, 2023 by Global Research News

Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “A False Flag”? They Let it Happen? Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”?

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Felicity Arbuthnot, October 31, 2023

War and Natural Gas: The Israeli Invasion and Gaza’s Offshore Gas Fields

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“Greater Israel”: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East

Israel Shahak, November 1, 2023

Agenda to Depopulate the Planet Through COVID Vaccination. Revealed by Government Reports and Pfizer Documents

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“The Hamas Attack”: What Really Happened on October 7?

Robert Inlakesh, November 1, 2023

Section Commander of the Gaza Fence: “The obstacle is built so that even a fox cannot pass it”. They Let It Happen. The Hamas Attack Was Allowed to Close the Book on Palestine.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, October 21, 2023

The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Netanyahu’s “False Flag”, Connecting the Dots – and More

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The “Air Vaccine” Is Here, No Needle Necessary to Get mRNA Technology Into Humans

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Netanyahu’s “False Flag” Is a “Copy and Paste”: The Pentagon’s Secret “Operation Northwoods”(1962) Directed Against Cuba. “Casualty Lists Would Cause a Helpful Wave of Indignation”

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 22, 2023

The Forbidden Truth: Israel and the U.S. Are “Toys of the Billionaires”. “A War with Iran Is Just Around the Corner”.

Emanuel Pastreich, October 15, 2023

Criminality Beyond Description: Netanyahu Supports both Hamas as well as Al Qaeda Terrorists

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 20, 2023

Video: Is It A False Flag? “Wiping Gaza Off the Map”. The Dangers of Military Escalation

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Why a Global Government Is the Ultimate Goal of Billionaires. “The Goal Is for You to Own Nothing”

Dr. Joseph Mercola, October 7, 2023

Video: “Justified Vengeance” and The History of Israeli “False Flags”(2001-2023): Palestine Portrayed as “The Aggressor”

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Video: Pfizer’s “Secret” Report on the Covid Vaccine. Beyond Manslaughter. The Evidence is Overwhelming. The Vaccine Should Be Immediately Withdrawn Worldwide

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Declaration of a Planetary Emergency to Begin “the Long Term Reduction of Global Population”

Jacob Nordangard, October 21, 2023

The Brain Is the Battlefield of the Future. The WEF’s Stated Objective is “Altering the Human Being”

Peter Koenig, October 28, 2023

Video: Dr. Kary Mullis, The Other “Covid Nobel Prize”. Inventor of PCR “Test”, Died in August 2019

Kary B. Mullis, October 12, 2023

Large Scale U.S. Military Buildup in the Middle East: Is America Preparing to Launch World War III?

Asad Ismi, October 28, 2023

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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Spain – Sep. 22, 2023 (Translated) – Three parents denounce Ministry of Health for the sudden death of their children after taking the Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine.

Juan José, Marvellous and Daniel were 12, 13 and 14 years old, respectively, when they died suddenly playing sports.

Their names are Juan José Quirós López (12), Marvellous Ounanefe Johnson Andrews (13) and Daniel Herce Rodríguez (14). They were 12, 13, and 14 years old, respectively. No previous history of pathologies. They died suddenly from hypertrophic heart disease – the first two – and cardiac arrhythmia. Their parents, who assure THE OBJECTIVE they were “perfectly healthy” before vaccination, blame it on the Covid-19 vaccine, and this Thursday (Sep.21) they have filed a complaint with the State Attorney General’s Office for homicide due to serious recklessness, genetic manipulation, threats, coercion, public health, prevarication, against moral integrity with damage to life and abuse of authority.

This means has accompanied the parents to file the complaint, which has been drafted by the Liberum Association, and that is directed against the former Ministers of Health Salvador Illa and Carolina Darias. A posteriori, they have addressed the Ministry that is located in Madrid’s Paseo del Prado to deliver it with the intention of investigating their cases. They have been asking for it for a year, but it has been in vain.

“We want justice to be done, and more parents to join our complaint” they sob before this journalist. Daniel died suddenly while lying on the sofa at home. “I thought he had fallen asleep, but then he didn’t get up”, remembers Diana, his mother. Her son had been vaccinated with (Pfizer) lot FG7898, that registered adverse effects. Marvellous and Juan José, on the other hand, the same batch of Pfizer vaccine had been injected, FG9428. Both died suddenly, one playing soccer and the other in the schoolyard.

The complaint, to which you have had access THE OBJECTIVE in its entirety, regrets that “from the administrations and health authorities pretend that [the parents] believe that these deaths should be classified as natural death, and that the possibility of the recognized adverse effect of the vaccines against COVID-19 has not even been raised, so that, in addition one of the minors [Juan] will become infected with SARS-CoV-2, after two inoculations, giving positive to the PCR post mortem”.

Parents report that their children were “perfectly healthy”, and that they only began to experience respiratory complications after inoculation. “My child began to suffocate when he ran, had never happened to him”, says Soledad, representing the parents of the young man from Malaga, who are still very “affected” to have been able to appear in the Prosecutor’s Office. He still cries when reviewing the text of the complaint, he sees the image of the body of his nephew.

A “Natural Death”? 

Parents report that the only explanation they received is that their minor children had died “naturally”, and that it was probably due to a “hereditary” issue. “How will it be natural for a 12-year-old athlete to die suddenly?”, clamor Soledad, Juan José’s aunt. To Felix, Marvellous’s father, has already undergone numerous cardiac tests.

“It seems that the Institute of Legal Medicine is desperately looking for one of the parents to have a heart condition”, complains Alexis Aneas, Liberum’s lawyer representing the complainants. He recalls that Felix’s son “had federal recognition in September and declared him fit to play”. He died in December. The complaint states that the heart of the deceased was “increased in size”: 480 grams when it was to oscillate around 344.

“Pfizer recognized early that tens of thousands of effects of myocarditis in young people”, recalls Aneas, who is also an expert in health issues, who abounds: “It makes sense because the age group where pathologies appear is 12 to 15 years old, who received the adult dose. From 5 to 11, the vaccine has a third of the dose. The ailment can occur because the Spike protein that is replicated by the vaccine lodges in the receptors of the heart tissue and generates an autoimmune disease, which causes thickening of the myocardium, what is known as pericarditis or arrhythmia”.

Effects of COVID-19 Vaccines

Alexis Aneas also wonders “how it will be natural for an athlete child to die of an arrhythmia”. Liberum’s spokesman says they are “fed up with administrations telling us that people die by chance”, and points to Daniel’s case. “He had neuronal damage that could be due to the fact that the substance generates prions that cross the brain barrier, as demonstrated by a study that we attached in the complaint”, a suspicion, since “what we want is for it to be investigated”.

The complaint is also directed against the president of the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS), Silvia Calzón, and the director, Maria Jesus Lamas, as well as “any other authority that, from the investigative actions, derives criminal liability for the events reported”.

In this one, it charges against Pfizer and Moderna, noting that “according to the clinical trial, eight cases of COVID-19 were recorded in the vaccinated group out of a total of 18,198 participants 7 days after receiving the second dose; while in the placebo group 162 cases were recorded out of 18,325 participants”.

With these data, the laboratory advertised an efficacy of 95% of the vaccine compared to the non-inoculated ones. But from Liberum they denounce that “this form of expression of efficacy of a medicine is biased and misleading”: “In absolute terms, the reality was that the incidence of PCR+ had been 0.8% in the placebo group (162 / 18,325), compared to 0.04% in the vaccinated group (8 / 18,198), a difference of 0.76%”. Based on this data they ask, “why did children have to be vaccinated, when the best interests of the minor should prevail, if they are not a reservoir of this disease?”

Call to More Parents 

This is the first complaint in which parents hold the authorities to account for the death of their children after vaccination against COVID-19. The Diario de Sevilla newspaper reported last June on how at least seven people had reported serious injuries to Health after receiving any of the doses of the coronavirus remedy. One of them, represented by the law firm of Fernando Osuna, claimed more than one million euros for having lost “97% of his vision”, in addition to having limitations in his legs.

The intention of the complaint is also to call other parents who find themselves in a similar situation to action. “These three deaths of young athletes, performing physical activity, are not the only ones in our country”, reads the complaint, which exposes dozens of cases, with screenshots from journalistic publications, of deaths of other minors doing sports.

From the Liberum Association they ask the health authorities a question: “How many more deceased children do they need, to start investigating?”.

Sep. 25, 2023 – Spain: Parents sue ex-Ministers of Health for the death of their children after vaccination.

Ontario man files $35.6 million lawsuit against Pfizer over son’s vaccine death.

New Tecumseth, ON, resident Dan Hartman has initiated a wrongful death lawsuit against Pfizer because his son Sean died from the COVID-19 vaccine. 

“On the morning of September 27, 2021, 33 days after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination, Sean Hartman was found deceased in his bedroom by his mother,” said Sheikh Law lawyer Umar Sheikh in a court filing. 

“The Plaintiff pleads that Sean Hartman died as a result of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination.” 

Dan was denied money from the Vaccine Injury Support Program in March despite Sean dying after getting the COVID-19 vaccine. 

“My son died 33 days after his first Pfizer vaccine and he was a perfectly healthy boy with no underlying conditions,” he said. 

He took a COVID-19 vaccine to be allowed to play hockey. Dan said he took him to the emergency room four days after his first dose because he had brown circles around his eyes, a rash on his face and pain in his right shoulder. 

American pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole determined in July Sean died from the COVID-19 vaccine.  

Cole examined his tissues, finding spike protein in his adrenal glands.

“The adrenal glands control your blood pressure, so if Sean’s blood pressure dropped, he would have died,” said Dan. 

Dan is seeking $35.6 million in damages; specialized damages to be determined prior to the trial; prejudgment and post-judgment interest; the costs of the proceeding, including all applicable taxes; and further relief the court considers just. 

Sheikh said Pfizer “owed a duty of care to Sean Hartman to accurately inform him of all risks associated with the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination.” He added it owed him a duty to warn him of the risks associated with the safety and efficacy of these vaccines. 

When it comes to the standard of care, Dan pleaded Pfizer breached it for the manufacturing, testing, sale, reporting and administration of its vaccines. 

With the standard of care, Sheikh alleged it was breached when it disregarded and misrepresented the results of the safety trials by providing an incorrect characterization of the efficacy data; discounting results of adverse events on vaccinated people in the study; not highlighting all results and adverse events revealed in the studies conducted; and not stopping their administration on Canadians due to known safety concerns. 

Dan pleaded Pfizer negligently misrepresented the safety of the vaccine and did not disclose the risks associated with it, which include but are not limited to myocarditis and pericarditis. 

The particulars include failing to disclose people under 40 years old had an increased risk of myocarditis after taking the vaccine, rates of myocarditis were higher in adolescent males, inadequate testing was performed to ensure their safety and efficacy, failing to complete post-market surveillance and inform the Canadian government and the public of the results, failing to disclose the issues with the vaccine, and failing to identify, implement, and verify procedures to address post-market surveillance risks. 

He accused Pfizer of improper product distribution when it was being sold. This is because the foreseeable risks exceeded the benefits associated with the product, it was more dangerous than ordinary consumers would expect, it did not have adequate, effective warnings and instructions over these dangers, inadequate testing and it was unfit for the purpose for which it was intended. 

Sheikh concluded by saying Pfizer “concealed the fact the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination had severe possible risks and outcomes when administered, including but not limited to myocarditis, pericarditis and death, to the public, healthcare providers, and regulatory authorities, including Health Canada.” 

“The Plaintiff pleads that the wrongful death of his son Sean Hartman was caused by the negligence of the Defendant,” he said.

My Take…

The criminal complaints and lawsuits have begun.

It is crucial for parents of children killed by COVID-19 Vaccines to join forces, and support each other in battling large corrupt pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna and in holding Health Officials and politicians personally liable for the injuries and deaths they caused.

I believe in time we will discover that many politicians and Healthcare Leaders received bribes or some form of “compensation” to push toxic experimental COVID-19 vaccines they knew would injure or kill many of the recipients, including pregnant women and children.

The battle for justice is only beginning.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from COVID Intel


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

Video: BlackRock and the Oligopoly. James Corbett

November 2nd, 2023 by James Corbett

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***

In today’s video, I spoke with James Corbett, about Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street, Financial Giants & The Oligopoly.

The “big three” asset management corporations own shares in almost every major US company in each industry, making them the top institutional shareholders for these giant corporations. The list is endless… They are also the top shareholders in each other, raising serious questions about competition, consolidation, monopolisation and influence, including in government.

We also discuss the general trend of consolidation.

Feel free to use Yahoo Finance, type in a company and go to holders to see the top shareholders.

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***

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Gaza Strip’s only hospital for cancer treatment was damaged after it was struck by Israeli war jets, the hospital’s director said Monday.

The Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in Gaza was attacked for a second time since Israel’s relentless bombing campaign on the besieged Gaza Strip began on 7 October.

The hospital’s cancer patients were left in a “state of panic”, the hospital’s director general, Dr. Subhi Skaik, said on Facebook.

“A state of panic afflicts cancer patients and medical staff as a result of the heavy Israeli bombardment of the only Turkish Friendship Hospital for cancer patients in the Gaza Strip and the infliction of severe damage to it as a result of the Israeli occupation repeatedly targeting its surroundings,” Dr Skaik said.

“The [Israeli forces] not only increased the suffering and pain of cancer patients and deprived them of medicines and travel for treatment abroad, but it now endangered their lives by targeting the hospital surroundings,” he added. 

In separate comments to the Turkish news agency Anadolu, Dr. Skaik said that the Israeli air strikes hit the third floor of the hospital building causing “extensive damage, as a fire broke out in the floor before being contained”.

The Israeli bombing damaged some of the electromechanical systems, as well as exposed medical staff and patients alike to danger, he added.

Israeli forces had repeatedly bombed the vicinity of the hospital in recent days, according to local media reports.

Turkey condemned Israel’s attack “in the strongest terms” and emphasised that the targeting of hospitals such as Turkish-Palestinian Friendship and the blockade on Gaza were violations of international law.  

“It is inexplicable for such an attack to take place given all the necessary information, including the coordinates of the institution in question, which is the only cancer hospital in Gaza, was shared with Israeli authorities in advance,” Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a statement on X

“The siege in Gaza, aimed at depriving the Palestinian people of their most basic rights, and these inhumane attacks, clearly violate international law,” the statement added. 

A second hospital, Indonesian Hospital, was also hit by Israel in its immediate surroundings on Monday. 

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the attack led to serious damage and hospitals such as the Indonesian Hospital, as well as houses and places of worship, were repeatedly targeted since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7.  

“The Israeli attack endangered the lives of hundreds of injured people, patients, medical personnel, journalists and thousands of displaced people,” Gaza Health Ministry spokesman, Ashraf Al-Qudra, said. 

“Under the Geneva Conventions, attacks on hospitals are strictly prohibited,” he added. 

The Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital was built by the Turkish government in 2017 and is considered one of the largest hospitals in the Gaza Strip.

The hospital also operates as a full-fledged training centre for doctors, nurses and paramedic staff. 

The Turkish government-funded hospital also works as a research hospital, where the faculty of medicine of the Islamic University of Gaza are based. 

Israeli forces extended their air and ground attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip – which has been under heavy bombardment since Hamas’ surprise offensive on Israel on 7 October. 

The Palestinian death toll has surpassed 8,525, according to Gaza’s health ministry – including at least 3,500 children.

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Featured image is from TRT World

UNRWA Chief Says 70% of Gaza Victims Are Children, Women

November 2nd, 2023 by Middle East Monitor

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Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Organisation for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said 70 per cent of the Palestinian martyrs who have been killed by the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip since 7 October are children and women, warning that there is no safe place in Gaza.

He pointed out that churches, mosques, hospitals and civilian facilities housing displaced people have been targeted, describing the Israeli attacks as collective punishment for Palestinians living under siege.

For her part, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Catherine Russell, explained that the Israeli aggression resulted in the killing of more than 3,400 children and the injury of at least 6,300.

She added that this toll indicates that 420 children were killed or injured every day, stressing “these numbers should shock us to the core.”

She indicated that the Israeli raids resulted in the complete or partial destruction of at least 221 schools and more than 177,000 homes.

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Featured image: Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) holds press conference in Jerusalem on October 27, 2023 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]