Tag: ethnic cleansing

Israeli Defense Minister Says No Humanitarian Aid Will Enter Gaza, Vows Indefinite Occupation

On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza and vowed that the IDF will occupy the territory it has captured in Gaza indefinitely.

Since March 2, Israel has imposed a total blockade on aid and all other goods entering Gaza, which constitutes collective punishment of the entire civilian population. Katz said that the blockade was one of Israel’s main “pressure tools” against Hamas.

“Israel’s policy is clear: no humanitarian aid will be allowed into Gaza, and preventing humanitarian aid to Gaza is one of the central pressure tools that stops Hamas from using this means against the population,” Katz said in a post on X.

“No one, under the current reality, is going to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza, and no preparations are being made to allow any aid of this kind,” Katz added.

Katz’s comments were meant to clarify an earlier statement where he suggested Israel could allow the distribution of aid “through civilian companies.” In that statement, he also said IDF troops would not leave the territory they’ve captured since Israel restarted its genocidal war on March 18.

“The IDF will remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and the communities in any temporary or permanent reality in Gaza—similar to Lebanon and Syria,” Katz said. “To date, hundreds of thousands of residents have been evacuated, and dozens of percent of the territory have been incorporated into the security zones.”

He added that “in parallel” to the Israeli occupation of territory in Gaza, the “plan for the voluntary relocation of Gaza residents is being advanced,” referring to the goal of ethnic cleansing.

The Israeli military now controls more than 50% of Gaza’s territory and is working to turn the entire southern city of Rafah into a “buffer zone” free of Palestinians. The Associated Press noted that Katz’s comments will likely further complicate negotiations with Hamas since the Palestinian group is insisting it will only free the remaining Israeli hostages in exchange for a permanent ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal, terms Israel has refused.

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Israel is About to Empty Gaza

Israel is poised to carry out the largest campaign of ethnic cleansing since the end of World War II. Since March 2, it has blocked all food and humanitarian aid into Gaza and cut off electricity, so that the last water desalination plant no longer functions.

The Israeli military has seized half of the territory — Gaza is 25 miles long and four to five miles wide — and placed two-thirds of Gaza under displacement orders, rendered “no-go zones,” including the border town of Rafah, which is encircled by Israeli troops.

On Friday Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that Israel will “intensify” the war against Hamas and use “all military and civilian pressure, including evacuation of the Gaza population south and implementing United States President [Donald] Trump’s voluntary migration plan for Gaza residents.”

Since Israel’s unilateral ending of the ceasefire on March 18 — which was never honored by Israel — Israel has been carrying out relentless bombing and shelling against civilians, killing over 1,400 Palestinians and wounding over 3,600, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

An average of one hundred children are being killed daily according to the United Nations. Israel is, at the same time, inciting tensions with Egypt to lay what I suspect will be the groundwork for a mass expulsion of Palestinians into the Egyptian Sinai.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, echoing Katz, said Israel would not lift the total blockade until Hamas was “defeated” and the remaining 59 Israeli hostages were released.

“Not even a grain of wheat will enter Gaza,” he vowed.

But no one in Israel or Gaza expects Hamas, which has weathered the decimation of Gaza and sustained mass slaughter, to surrender or disappear.

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Protest at Travis AFB Against US Weapons for Israeli Genocide

At 7:30 a.m. on April 9, the heavy traffic flow into California’s Travis Air Force Base came to a sudden stop.  As they have done numerous times, the “People’s Arms Embargo” blocked the main road into the base. The action this time commemorated the recently deceased long-time peace advocate David Hartsough, one of the co-founders of the Peoples Arms Embargo.

With traffic into the base stopped, one angry airman jumped out of his pickup truck and threatened to assault the peaceful protestors. He finally thought better of it and returned to his truck. Other waiting airmen and airwomen were patient and a few indicated support for the protest. One lowered his window and said, “Palestine will be free!” In the workout gym in an adjacent plaza, many people on their workout machines waved and jumped up and down in support.

At the blockade on the six-lane divided highway, about forty police officers were quickly on the scene. They broadcast a recorded message in English and Spanish that anyone blocking traffic would be arrested. Twelve protesters were arrested and cited with the crime.

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War, Doublethink, and the Struggle for Survival: Geopolitics of the Gaza Genocide

In a genocidal war that has spiraled into a struggle for political survival, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and the global powers supporting him continue to sacrifice Palestinian lives for political gain.

The sordid career of Israel’s extremist National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, epitomizes this tragic reality.

Ben-Gvir joined Netanyahu’s government coalition following the December 2022 elections. He remained in the coalition after the October 7 2023 war and genocide, with the understanding that any ceasefire in Gaza would force his departure.

As long as the killing of Palestinians and the destruction of their cities continued as long as Ben-Gvir stayed on board – though neither he nor Netanyahu had any real ‘next-day’ plan, other than to carry out some of the most heinous massacres against a civilian population in recent history.

On January 19, Ben-Gvir left the government immediately following a ceasefire agreement, which many argued would not last. Netanyahu’s untrustworthiness, along with the collapse of his government if the war ended completely, made the ceasefire unfeasible.

Ben-Gvir returned when the genocide resumed on March 18. “We are back, with all our might and power!”  he wrote In a tweet on the day of his return.

Israel lacks a clear plan because it cannot defeat the Palestinians. While the Israeli army has inflicted suffering on the Palestinian people like no other force has against a civilian population in modern history, the war endures because the Palestinians refuse to surrender.

Yet, Israel’s military planners know that a military victory is no longer possible. Former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon recently added his voice to the growing chorus, stating during an interview on March 15 that “revenge is not a war plan”.

The Americans, who supported Netanyahu’s violation of the ceasefire – thus resuming the killings – also understand that the war is almost entirely a political struggle, designed to keep figures like Ben-Gvir and extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in Netanyahu’s coalition.

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Another Soldier Confesses: IDF Used Palestinians As Human Shields, Committed Other War Crimes

Another Israeli soldier and veteran of Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza has admitted that he was a party to war crimes — and says his commander ordered him and other soldiers to continue perpetrating those crimes even after they’d raised objections. This latest of many such accounts was given to CBS News by an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldier who agreed to speak on the condition that his identity wouldn’t be revealed. The experience that troubled him the most was his unit’s practice of forcing Palestinian civilians to probe buildings for improvised explosive devices.  

“They were Palestinian,” he said. “We sent them in first to see if the building was clear and check for booby traps…They were trembling and shaking.” So apparently common is the practice of using Palestinians in such a manner that it has a name of its own: the “Mosquito Protocol,” where Palestinians civilians are equated with the hated insects.  

The soldier told CBS that he objected to that abusive treatment of civilians, to the point that he took his concern to the chain of command — where it fell on deaf ears. “We talked to our commander, and we asked him to stop doing it,” he said, but said the unconscionable orders continued to be issued. 

The whistleblowing soldier who spoke to CBS says he continues to be troubled by what he personally did in Gaza. “I’m morally wounded. It’s fucked up, you know, to use citizens as your human shield like a dog.” The term “moral injury” describes psychological problems that spring from having observed, perpetrated, or failed to prevent actions that violate one’s sense of right and wrong. 

Of course, the people on the other end of the depraved practice battle their own psychological demons. CBS spoke to a 14-year-old Palestinian in the West Bank, where the IDF is accused of the same form of abuse. He claims he and his nine-year-old cousin were forced at gunpoint to search a four-story apartment building. “I was so scared. Then they started beating us,” he said. The IDF told CBS it prohibits this behavior.  

The soldier said he was witness to other IDF evils: “We’ve burned down buildings for no reasons, which is violating the international law, of course.” That confession should come as little surprise to even the most casual observer of the war, given the IDF’s astonishingly thorough and plainly visible destruction of neighborhoods, towns and cities throughout Gaza — and IDF soldiers’ enthusiastic use of personal social media accounts to share videos of themselves joyfully demolishing entire housing complexes. A January before-and-after analysis of Gaza using satellite imagery concluded that between 50% and 61% of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. 

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Arab Complicity in Israel’s Genocide

Explaining Arab political failure to challenge Israel through traditional analysis — such as disunity, general weakness and a failure to prioritize Palestine — does not capture the full picture.

The idea that Israel is brutalizing Palestinians simply because the Arabs are too weak to challenge the Benjamin Netanyahu government — or any government — implies that, in theory, Arab regimes could unite around Palestine. However, this view oversimplifies the matter.

Many well-meaning, pro-Palestine commentators have long urged Arab nations to unite, pressure Washington to reassess its unwavering support for Israel and take decisive actions to lift the siege on Gaza, among other crucial steps.

While these steps may hold some value, the reality is far more complex, and such wishful thinking is unlikely to change the behavior of Arab governments. These regimes are more concerned with sustaining or returning to some form of status quo — one in which Palestine’s liberation remains a secondary priority.

Since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, the Arab position on Israel has been weak at best, and treasonous at worst.

Some Arab governments even went so far as to condemn Palestinian resistance in United Nations debates. While countries like China and Russia at least attempted to contextualize the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israeli occupation forces imposing a brutal siege on Gaza, countries like Bahrain placed the blame squarely on the Palestinians.

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The Last Chapter of the Genocide

This is the last chapter of the genocide.

It is the final, blood-soaked push to drive the Palestinians from Gaza.

No food. No medicine. No shelter. No clean water. No electricity.

Israel is swiftly turning Gaza into a Dantesque cauldron of human misery where Palestinians are being killed in their hundreds and soon, again, in their thousands and tens of thousands, or they will be forced out never to return.

The final chapter marks the end of Israeli lies.

The lie of the two-state solution. The lie that Israel respects the laws of war that protect civilians. The lie that Israel bombs hospitals and schools only because they are used as staging areas by Hamas.

The lie that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, while Israel routinely forces captive Palestinians to enter potentially bobby trapped tunnels and buildings ahead of Israeli troops. 

The lie that Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are responsible — the charge often being errant Palestinian rockets — for the destruction of hospitals, United Nations’ buildings or mass Palestinian casualties.

The lie that humanitarian aid to Gaza is blocked because Hamas is hijacking the trucks or smuggling in weapons and war material. 

The lie that Israeli babies are beheaded or Palestinians carried out mass rape of Israeli women. The lie that 75 percent of the tens of thousands killed in Gaza were Hamas “terrorists.”

The lie that Hamas, because it was allegedly rearming and recruiting new fighters, is responsible for the breakdown of the ceasefire agreement.

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Sanitizing Resumption of Genocide as ‘Pressure on Hamas’

The New York Times produced an article on Friday, March 21, bearing the headline “Israel Tries to Pressure Hamas to Free More Hostages.” In the first paragraph, readers were informed that Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had undertaken to “turn up the pressure” by warning that Israel was “preparing to seize more territory in Gaza and intensify attacks by air, sea and land if the armed Palestinian group does not cooperate.”

This was no doubt a rather bland way of describing mass slaughter and illegal territorial conquest—not to mention a convenient distraction from the fact that Hamas is not the party that is currently guilty of a failure to cooperate. In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Israel annihilated the ceasefire agreement that came into effect in January following 15 months of genocide by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip.

Over those months, Israel officially killed at least 48,577 Palestinians in Gaza; in February, the death toll was bumped up to almost 62,000, to account for missing persons presumed to be dead beneath the rubble.

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The liberal establishment is finally criticizing ethnic cleansing in Gaza now that they can blame Trump

A week after the long-awaited ceasefire between Hamas and Israel brought a rare moment of quiet skies for Palestinians, President Donald Trump announced his plan to “clean out” Gaza, proposing to relocate its remaining population to neighboring countries like Jordan and Egypt. He has since reiterated this stance, claiming that the U.S. aims to “take over” Gaza, in order to rebuild and develop the area into a “riviera of the Middle East”. Is it, one may ask, truly a Trump presidency without the permanent furrowing of one’s brow?

Palestinians were quick to react to Trump: while some do have fears about the uncertainty of their safety and future in the shadow of 15 months of non-stop bombardment that left the strip decimated of both human life and infrastructure, many others expressed their steadfast resolve to remain.

“We will remain here – staying above the rubble, stones and iron. We will remain in our homeland, in Gaza”, said Manar Hamo of the Bureij camp.

But some of the most fervent pushback to Trump’s plan to takeover Gaza has come from the very same people, institutions, and newsrooms that spent fifteen months either remaining quiet on the extermination of Palestinians or supporting and building the case for it to continue. What we find is that there is a manufacturing of a moral hysteria around Trump’s proposal that seeks to – either intentionally or by way of liberal anti-Trump muscle memory – erase the direct culpability of the Biden-Harris administration and the Democrats in the genocide of Palestinians.

And so we have been ambushed by their discovery of the words “war crime”, “ethnic cleansing”, “dastardly deed” and “morally indefensible”. Even The New York Times’ made the very novel discovery of what international law may have to say about forced displacement. What we are seeing, again and again, is the introduction of language that not only offers the criminality of a Trump administration policy that has yet to be put in place but also explicitly moralizes about violence against Palestinians, a moralizing that was markedly absent as U.S-funded and made bombs were ripping apart Palestinian families for fifteen months straight.

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Israeli Defense Minister Says 40,000 Forcibly Displaced Palestinians in West Bank Cannot Return Home

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that the Israeli military has forcibly displaced 40,000 Palestinians in the northern occupied West Bank and that they couldn’t return home as the IDF will be operating in the area over the next year, raising fears of a new ethnic cleansing campaign.

The Israeli military launched the current operation in the West Bank, dubbed “Iron Wall,” on January 21. It has been focused on the northern cities of Jenin and Tulkarm but has spread elsewhere in the occupied territory. In a new escalation, Israeli tanks entered the West Bank on Sunday for the first time since 2002.

Katz said in a statement that he ordered the Israeli military “to prepare for an extended stay in the camps that have been cleared for the coming year, and not to allow residents to return.”

“We will not return to the reality that existed in the past. We will continue to clear refugee camps and other terrorist centers in order to dismantle the [militant] battalions and terrorist infrastructures of extremist Islam that were built,” Katz added.

The tank deployment into the West Bank came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered an escalation in the occupied territory following the bombing of empty buses in the Israeli city of Bat Yam near Tel Aviv. Israeli officials blamed West Bank resistance groups for the attack, and a note was left that said “revenge from Tulkarm.” However, two Jewish Israelis were arrested over their alleged involvement in the bombing.

According to the UN, more than 50 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the new operation was launched last month. The dead include many civilians and children as the Israeli military expanded an “open fire order” in the occupied territory.

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