Tag: israel

Resistance ops nearly doubled ‘all over Israel’ in two years

Resistance operations against Israelis, particularly in the occupied West Bank, have surged dramatically since the start of the year, Hebrew media reported on 16 August. 

According to Israeli news outlet Channel 12, hundreds of operations have been carried out since the start of 2024. Despite most of them being in the West Bank, the operations have targeted “every point in Israel.” 

Israel’s Channel 10 correspondent Noam Cohen also noted a surge in resistance operations across Israel and the occupied West Bank over the past 10 months. 

Between 7 October and the current month, 338 resistance operations were carried out against Israelis, Cohen said, adding that this marks an 82 percent surge compared to 2022 and around a nine percent jump since last year. 

Commenting on the increase in the average number of operations per month, Cohen said the average was five in 2020, 10 in 2021, and 17 in 2022. Since 7 October, it has become an average of 31 per month, the correspondent added. 

The majority of the over 300 operations since October have been in the West Bank. Ten were in occupied Jerusalem and 28 took place in the territories occupied in 1948. 

The operations have killed 28 settlers and wounded over 250.

Two Israelis were killed in a stabbing operation in Holon, near Tel Aviv, on 4 August.

An Israeli prison guard was found dead in his home in the occupied West Bank in early July. It was discovered later that month that he was killed by a member of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, Ibrahim Mansour, who was detained by Israeli forces on 22 July. 

One soldier was killed and others injured in a stabbing operation in the Karmiel settlement on 3 July. These are just a few examples.

The surge in operations comes as there has also been a massive spike in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 7 October.

Around 100 armed Israeli settlers invaded the Palestinian town of Jit in the occupied West Bank on 15 August, firing bullets at residents and setting homes, cars, and other property on fire. 

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‘Incomprehensible’: US Approves $20 Billion in New Arms for Israel as Gaza Death Toll Tops 40,000

Health officials in Gaza said Thursday that the official death toll from Israel’s 10-month war has topped 40,000, though that is believed to be a vast undercount of the true figure. The grim milestone was reached just days after the Biden administration greenlit $20 billion in additional weapons sales to Israel, including 50 F-15 fighter jets, tank ammunition, mortar rounds, tactical vehicles and advanced air-to-air missiles. The U.S. approved the sales despite growing calls for an arms embargo on Israel. “This is just a continuation of a policy that has been going on now for 10 months of the U.S. providing to Israel all the arms that it requests,” says Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest over Gaza policy in October. “It is a dark day for American foreign policy.” We also speak with Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who says it’s “incomprehensible” that the U.S. keeps supplying Israel with weapons. “There should be no more arms going into that place before there is a ceasefire.”

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‘Unlawful Transfer’ – Israel Issues New Evacuation Orders to Palestinians in Gaza

Today’s evacuation orders come a few days after the United Nations (UN) announced that 84 percent of the population in Gaza is under evacuation orders by the Israeli army.

The Israeli army issued new evacuation orders on Friday to Palestinians in various areas previously classified as “humanitarian safe zones” in central and southern Gaza.

The evacuation warnings came in the form of text messages sent to residents and displaced Palestinians alike along with flyers dropped in the northern area of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, and in neighborhoods in the eastern part of Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, according to Reuters news agency.

The Israeli army claimed that these areas were used by Hamas “as a base for firing mortars and rockets towards Israel,” Reuters said.

Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure and population as command centers for its operations.

The Palestinian group, however, has always denied operating from civilian facilities.

In 2014, following a deadly Israeli war on the Strip, Amnesty International investigated Israeli claims and reported that no evidence was found that the Palestinian group intentionally used civilians as shields.

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Saudi Crown Prince Tells U.S. He ‘Fears He Will Be Assassinated for Normalizing Saudi-Israeli Ties’

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is telling US lawmakers he fears he will be assassinated for selling out the Arab world by normalizing ties with Israel, according to a new report in Politico.

From Politico, “The Saudi Crown Prince is Talking About An Assassination. His Own.”:

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, knows a thing or two about assassinations. Lately, he’s been telling U.S. lawmakers he’s at risk of one.

The Saudi royal has mentioned to members of Congress that he’s putting his life in danger by pursuing a grand bargain with the U.S. and Israel that includes normalizing Saudi-Israeli ties. On at least one occasion, he has invoked Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian leader slain after striking a peace deal with Israel, asking what the U.S. did to protect Sadat. He also has discussed the threats he faces in explaining why any such deal must include a true path to a Palestinian state — especially now that the war in Gaza has heightened Arab fury toward Israel.

The talks were described to me by a former U.S. official briefed on the conversations and two other people with knowledge of them. All of the people, like others quoted in this column, were granted anonymity to describe a high-stakes, sensitive topic. The discussions have been weighty and serious, but one takeaway, the people said, is that the crown prince, often referred to as MBS, appears intent on striking the mega-deal with the U.S. and Israel despite the risks involved. He sees it as crucial to his country’s future.

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Israel approves new West Bank settlement on UNESCO World Heritage Site

The Israeli government on 14 August officially approved municipal boundaries for a new settlement on a UNESCO World Heritage Site near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

Jewish supremacist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said his office had “completed its work and published a plan for the new Nahal Heletz settlement in Gush Etzion,” a bloc of settlements south of occupied Jerusalem.

“No anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist decision will stop the development of settlements. We will continue to fight against the dangerous project of creating a Palestinian state by creating facts on the ground. This is my life’s mission, and I will continue it as much as I can,” the Israeli official, who lives in an illegal settlement, said via social media.

All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have planning permission or not.

The Israeli Civil Administration published a blue line – a land survey process in which the administration ensures which lands are private and which are not – of 602 dunams (3.7 kilometers) for the establishment of the new Nahal Heletz settlement.
According to the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now, the intended area of the new settlement was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO. “Smotrich continues to promote de facto annexation, disregarding the UNESCO Convention that Israel is a signatory to, and we will all pay the price,” the organization said in a statement.

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Israeli forces using Palestinians as human shields to locate bombs in Gaza: report

The Israeli army has been using abducted Palestinian civilians as human shields in Gaza, an investigation by Ha’aretz has said, adding to previous allegations of a similar nature from Palestinian and Israeli sources.

The civilians, who the soldiers refer to as shawish, or ‘sergeant’ in Arabic, are used by the army to carry out dangerous search operations while dressed in Israeli army uniform, according to soldiers who spoke to the Israeli news outlet.

Soldiers deployed to Gaza who spoke to Haaretz said they were told it was preferable for a Palestinian to be killed by a booby trap bomb than an Israeli soldier.

In some instances, children and elderly people were abducted and forced to search tunnels for the army.

“There were times when really old people were made to go into houses,” one soldier said. 

Another soldier, who said that reports on Israel’s use of human shields by outlets like Al Jazeera reflected their experience, recounted an instance when a 16-year-old was abducted by the army and forced to search a tunnel. While some civilians were detained for a day to be used for searches, some were kept for 

“About five months ago, two Palestinians were brought to us. One was 20 and the other was 16. We were told: ‘Use them, they’re Gazans, use them as human shields,” the soldier said.

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U.S. is Sending America’s Children to Die in the Middle East Fighting a Religious War Defending Israeli Forces Who Proudly Rape Their Prisoners

World War III is now expanding in the Middle East, with a full blown battle all but certain in the days ahead, as the U.S. is deploying National Guard troops and rapidly deploying America’s young men and women to the Middle East, where many of them are sure to die fighting a religious war as they defend Israel.

States have been training and deploying National Guard troops to the Middle East since the beginning of this year (More than 300 Illinois National Guard soldiers prepare for deployment to Middle East – Hundreds of Army National Guard members deploy to middle east), with the latest deployments this past week occurring in Oregon and Pennsylvania.

Many of these National Guard members have never even been outside the U.S. before.

Pa. National Guard soldiers prepare to deploy to Middle East: ‘It’s a mixture of nerves and excitement’

Over the next few months, dozens of U.S. soldiers with the Pennsylvania National Guard’s 213th Personnel Company will be deployed to Kuwait and Jordan.

The soldiers, who range from teenagers to those in their early 40s, will be deployed in three different groups for nine to 12 months and will support U.S. Central Command and partner forces with security objectives in the region.

First, there will be a period of pre-mobilization training in the U.S. before soldiers deploy to the Middle East.

Soldier Alyssa Wenger, 23, of Chambersburg, a four-year member of the Pennsylvania National Guard, like Danner, will be deploying for the first time.

“It’s a mixture of nerves and excitement,” she said.

She said she will miss her family back home but considers those she is deploying with family as well.

For Wenger, a Wilson College graduate who commuted to school, this is the longest time she will be away from her family.

“That’s going to be my biggest challenge. I’ve never really been away from my parents and my siblings,” she said.
And this is also the first time that Watkins, a mother of three, will go through deployment as her husband is being deployed.

“So as a wife, I’m just trying to keep my family in line — emotions are OK. It’s OK to cry but at the same time, we have to keep moving forward. And we have to keep doing what we would normally do on a daily basis,” she said. (Source.)

In Oregon, the part-time soldiers are being told that deployment to the Middle East will enhance their careers.

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Why Did Washington Memory-hole Gaza?

Some are calling it Kamala Harris’s “Sister Souljah moment,” referring to when, in June 1992, then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton publicly rebuked racist comments made by a popular female hip-hop artist as a way of distancing himself from extreme elements of the Democratic base. 

For her part, Harris appeared to be drawing her own line Wednesday, shutting down chants from pro-Palestinian protesters at a Detroit rally on Wednesday, with a firm, “I’m speaking now.” The chants— “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide”—received this stern rebuke from the vice president: “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”

Harris’s team said the Democratic nominee for president had already met with the protesters earlier so any suggestion she was ignoring this important segment of her constituency was wrong. Her defenders on social media applauded her willingness to call out disruptive tactics that feed into the notion that the party is divided. “At a moment when former President Donald J. Trump is attacking her as ‘radical’ her confrontation with protesters on the left offered a visual rebuttal,” wrote the New York Times’s Rebecca Davis O’Brien.

Heckling protesters and Sista Souljah moments aside, the incident raises another question, just as important—is Kamala hiding from the Israel–Gaza issue? And are the mainstream media and the Biden administration helping her do it?

Consider that just four months ago, her boss had stood up at the State of the Union and pledged a military “surge” of humanitarian aid into Gaza to save starving Palestinians on the ground. “To the leadership of Israel I say this: Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip,” Biden said. “Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.”

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Why raping Palestinians is legitimate Israeli military practice

The Israeli sexual torture scandal, whereby nine soldiers were arrested on 29 July for allegedly physically and sexually torturing Palestinian men, was depicted in western media as a deviation from Israel’s usual torture methods.

The idea is that Israeli torturers of Palestinian prisoners do not usually subject them to rape.

Four of the arrested soldiers were later released following widespread riots.

The US State Department, presumably appalled by such torture, described a video reportedly showing the alleged rape as “horrific” and insisted that “[t]here ought to be zero tolerance for sexual abuse, rape of any detainee, period… If there are detainees who have been sexually assaulted or raped, the government of Israel, the IDF [Israeli army] need to fully investigate those actions and hold anyone responsible accountable to the full extent of the law”.

The White House, also presumably a stranger to the practice of abusing political prisoners held in US dungeons, remained calm but found reports of Israeli sexual torture “deeply concerning”.

The European Union followed suit and claimed to be “gravely concerned”.

But this is hardly a new development in the cruelty of the Israeli colonial-settler regime. The Israeli army has been systematically using physical and sexual torture against Palestinians since at least 1967, as human rights groups revealed years ago.

Indeed, sadism has been characteristic of the Zionist colonists’ treatment of Palestinians since the 1880s, as even Zionist leaders complained at the time.

This sadism and the sexual torture that often accompanies it are rooted not only in European colonial hubris but also in orientalist views that Arabs only “understand force” and are allegedly more susceptible to sexual torture than white Europeans.

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Kamala Harris Continues Support for Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza

Over 40,000 dead with thousands more buried under the rubble from tens of thousands of US bombs in Gaza has made no dent on Kamala Harris’s conscience. Nor has a death toll predicted by the UK medical journal Lancet that upwards of 185,000 will soon be dead from disease, starvation to go along with endless US weapons of civilian destruction in the most grisly genocidal ethnic cleansing this century.

Of course, Harris has more sense than to cheer on the Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Here campaign frames her support this way: “Harris has been clear: she will always work to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups”. She claims to be troubled by the suffering caused by endless US bombs there, but refuses to support an embargo on genocide weapons.

Hubby Doug Imhoff chimed in “Let me just make this clear: the vice president has been and will be a strong supporter of Israel as a secure democratic and Jewish state, and she will always ensure that Israel can defend itself, period. Because that’s who Kamala Harris is.” If Imhoff were honest and decent, he’s could do so by simply replacing “democratic” and “Jewish” with “Apartheid” and “genocidal.”

When anti genocide protesters confronted her Harris about her genocide support during a campaign speech in Detroit, Harris shot back “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” That has become the go-to Democratic response to pushback against Democratic support for Israeli genocide in Gaza: ‘Don’t’ mention US enabling genocide… we’ve got an election to win.

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