Tag: israel

Israel and the U.S. are interfering in Lebanese politics to oust Hezbollah — here’s why it won’t work

In his first speech as Secretary General, the new leader of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said that the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon had been meeting leaders of Lebanese political parties opposed to Hezbollah. According to Qassem, the ambassador was trying to convince them that Hezbollah’s collapse in the face of Israel’s offensive was imminent, urging the Lebanese parties to oppose Hezbollah. 

“You will never see our defeat,” Qassem said, addressing the ambassador, Lisa A. Johnson, directly and ignoring the Lebanese parties in question.

Two weeks earlier, a group of anti-Hezbollah parties gathered in the town of Maarab in Mount Lebanon, the headquarters of the Lebanese Forces — a far-right Christian party headed by its chairman, Samir Geagea. The parties in attendance issued a joint statement that indirectly blamed Iran for pushing Lebanon into a war it had no stake in, hijacking the decision of peace and war in Lebanon, and recruiting Lebanese citizens and using them as soldiers and “human shields.” The latter phrase was a veiled reference to Hezbollah, its social support base, and the people of southern Lebanon in general. The parties in Maarab also called for the election of a new president to the country.

Heading the meeting was Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian known for his brutal suppression of Palestinian and Lebanese adversaries, including Christian rivals, during the Lebanese Civil War that took place between 1975 and 1989. He is also known for his collaboration with Israeli occupation forces in Lebanon after 1982 and for having spent 12 years in a Syrian prison on charges of collaboration with Israel.

Geagea has also been openly voicing his will to run for president of Lebanon, which under the Lebanese constitution must be held by a Christian Maronite. The president’s chair has been vacant for two years now, as the opposing political forces have failed to agree on a candidate. The president in Lebanon is elected by the parliament and thus needs a degree of consensus between represented parties, which has been absent since the latest president, Michel Aoun, finished his term in October 2022.

Aoun was an ally of Hezbollah and represented an important trend of Christian support for the resistance group in Lebanese politics since 2008. During his presidency, Hezbollah’s adversaries in Lebanon, like Geagea, continued to accuse the resistance group of taking over the state, especially during the height of the Syrian Civil War, in which Hezbollah was actively involved in defending the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad. After Aoun’s presidency, several political parties were unwilling to accept a president who would be close to Hezbollah and its allies. This presidential vacancy has extended to the current day.

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Prepping Readers to Accept Mass Slaughter in Lebanese ‘Strongholds’

Back in May 2015, the New York Times’ Isabel Kershner decided to moonlight as an Israeli military propagandist by penning an alleged exposé (5/12/15)—headlined “Israel Says Hezbollah Positions Put Lebanese at Risk”—in which she diligently conveyed all that Israel had to say about Hezbollah’s infrastructure in south Lebanon.

The minuscule hamlet of Muhaybib, for example, was said to contain no fewer than “nine arms depots, five rocket-launching sites, four infantry positions, signs of three underground tunnels, three anti-tank positions and, in the very center of the village, a Hezbollah command post.” In the village of Shaqra, home to approximately 4,000 people, the Israeli army had meanwhile identified some “400 military sites and facilities belonging to Hezbollah.”

Only after 11 full paragraphs of transmitting the Israeli line did Kershner manage to insert the disclaimer that “the Israeli claims could not be independently verified.” But by that time, of course, the damage had been done, the reader having already been persuaded that south Lebanon was one big Hezbollah military installation, where Israel could not afford to concern itself with civilian lives in any future conflict. Driving the point home was former Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror, who informed Kershner that “many, many Lebanese will be killed” in the next showdown with Hezbollah.

I happened to be in south Lebanon at the time of the article’s publication, and drove over to Muhaybib and Shaqra to check out the fearsome landscape. Though I did not encounter any Hezbollah command posts, I did see some schoolchildren, elderly folks, bakeries, farms, clothing shops and, in Shaqra, a colorful establishment offering “Botox filling.”

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Viral video reveals Israeli hooligans attacked Dutch police while instigating Amsterdam unrest

Footage by a teenage YouTuber shows Tel Aviv Maccabi hooligans attacking Dutch police while pelting private homes with stones and hunting victims with metal pipes. The video offers the clearest evidence yet Israeli ultras provoked the violence which gripped the city.

A November 8 video report by a 16-year-old who publishes YouTube reports under the moniker “Bender” provided extensive on-the-ground footage of a mob of armed Tel Aviv Maccabi ultras hunting victims, throwing metal poles at police vehicles, threatening journalists, and even being detained after attacking undercover police officers. 

While Western corporate media, US President Joe Biden and the Dutch government have faithfully echoed the Israeli propaganda narrative that the Maccabi ultras were innocent victims of an antisemitic “pogrom,” no mainstream media outlet has reported to date that the Israeli football hooligans attacked police vehicles and undercover officers, in addition to their assaults on Muslim taxi drivers and other Dutch citizens.

In a statement to The Grayzone, Amsterdam police spokesperson Eline Roovers refused to discuss the documented attacks by Israeli thugs on Dutch police officers and vehicles. “We cannot comment on ongoing investigations, which means we are not able to answer questions related to this now,” Roovers stated, referring us instead to a press conference by Police Chief Peter Holla.

In his statement to the press, Holla acknowledged that “a [Palestinian] flag was taken down by Maccabi supporters,” who also “vandalized a cab.” On Amsterdam’s Dam Square, he said, “a Palestinian flag was set on fire.” 

The Dutch police said 5 people were hospitalized during the Nov. 7 mayhem, and 30 suffered more minor injuries. 

Effectively confirming the Israeli hooligans as the source of the violence in Amsterdam, Holla stated, “peace [returned]” only after Maccabi supporters were “accompanied by the police back to their hotels with the use of buses.”

However, the police chief’s comments evinced heavy political bias in favor of the very element that instigated the violence: “I can imagine that Israelis feel unsafe,” he said. “As mentioned before, their well-being is our top priority.”

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The long road to Beirut now Israel has bombed Syrian borders

On Thursday 7th of November I set off for Beirut. I could no longer use the direct road through the Masnaa border with Lebanon. Israel has now bombed the road at least twice reducing the stretch between the Syrian and Lebanese border to rubble. The US influence (on behalf of Israel) in Lebanon has prohibited any attempts by the Lebanese or Syrian side to repair the road. Israel has threatened to bomb it again if either side tries to restore operations.

The blue dotted line is the usual route which is fast and efficient. The purple dotted line is the route now needed to reach Beirut from Damascus. Israel has also bombed several points and bridges on the Homs western route so it is necessary to head for Tartous further north on the coast and then turn south to reach the border.

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Netanyahu Admits Israel Behind Pager Explosion Operation

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted Israeli responsibility for the Hezbollah pager explosion operation that kicked off the war on the north along the Lebanese border.

At today’s government meeting, Netanyahu acknowledged responsibility for the pager operation against Hezbollah for the first time, reported Amir Tsarfati.

“Senior security officials and the political leadership overseeing them opposed both the pager operation and Nasrallah’s elimination,” he said.

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NATO states denounce “anti-Semitism” after Israeli football hooligans riot in Amsterdam

On the night of Wednesday to Thursday, Israeli football hooligans ran riot in Amsterdam, tearing down Palestinian flags, assaulting Arabs, and chanting anti-Gaza slogans. Some clashed with residents of Amsterdam, where a protest was planned against holding a game between the Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam football clubs during the Gaza genocide. Five people were taken to hospital, and yesterday the Israeli Foreign Ministry said all Maccabi fans were accounted for.

But Washington and European governments reacted with a deafening propaganda campaign, denouncing those who clashed with the hooligans as “anti-Semitic.” While no one was killed, far-right Dutch government strongman Geert Wilders is demanding a police crackdown, supposedly to stop a deadly “pogrom” against Jews. As of yesterday, at least 62 people had been detained in a wave of arrests across the city.

This propaganda campaign is a pack of lies, spun by governments complicit in genocide by their support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. While they are outraged that five Israeli football hooligans were taken to hospital with light injuries, they support the mass murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

US President Joe Biden tweeted: “The Antisemitic attacks on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam are despicable and echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted. We’ve been in touch with Israeli and Dutch officials and appreciate Dutch authorities’ commitment to holding the perpetrators accountable. We must relentlessly fight anti-Semitism, wherever it emerges.”

European governments made similar comments. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz denounced the clashes as “intolerable” because they “attack us all,” and Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof called them a “terrible anti-Semitic attack.” Equating the clashes with the Holocaust, French President Emmanuel Macron “firmly condemned” violence that he claimed recalls “the most horrific hours of history.” Within the Netherlands, the press campaign is largely directed by Wilders himself.

“A pogrom in the streets of Amsterdam,” Wilders claimed in one tweet, adding: “Muslims with Palestinian flags hunting down Jews. I will NOT accept that. NEVER. The authorities will be held accountable for their failure to protect the Israeli citizens. Never again.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted on charges of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, said he views the “incident with the utmost gravity.” He demanded “vigorous and swift action” by Dutch authorities.

These hysterical, unsubstantiated claims that the football clashes were anti-Semitic acts, or even deadly pogroms, aim to justify a mass police crackdown. No one was killed, nor have Dutch authorities provided evidence that the hooligans who were punched, or in one case thrown into a river, were targeted because they were Jewish. Rather, there is massive video evidence, backed up by statements of Amsterdam police, that Maccabi hooligans’ assaults on people and property in Amsterdam, together with their pro-genocide chants, provoked an eruption of anger.

There is reason to believe, moreover, that this was a deliberate provocation arranged between Israeli authorities and the far-right Dutch government. In the days before the Maccabi-Ajax game, Dutch newspapers De Telegraaf and Voetbalzone reported that agents of Israel’s Mossad foreign intelligence agency would be traveling among the Maccabi fans, supposedly to protect them from Dutch protesters.

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MIT suspends student and bans magazine for article opposing Gaza genocide

Last Friday, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) issued an immediate “interim” suspension of graduate student Prahlad Iyengar for penning an article titled “On Pacifism” in an MIT student magazine, Written Revolution, opposing Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza. The publication itself has been banned from campus.

Zionist groups and the MIT administration have falsely claimed the article incites violence and have attempted to paint Iyengar as a terrorist. The article, which appeared in the fifth edition of the magazine, which is an American Sociological Association-recognized publication, does nothing of the sort as is obvious from the text of the article itself which is academic in character.

The World Socialist Web Site opposes this flagrant attack on free speech and academic freedom and calls on workers, students and youth to demand the immediate rescinding of all administrative measures against Iyengar.

As Iyengar wrote in a statement opposing the ban, “The administration has also banned Written Revolution outright, meaning students who disseminate or read this publication on campus may face discipline.” Some students reading the magazine were approached by the police. According to a recording of the call made to police, it was to stop the handing out “banned pamphlets.” Students face Orwellian disciplinary actions for distributing or merely reading the article on campus. 

The suspension and ban represent an escalation of the bipartisan campaign led by the Biden administration and Democratic Party against opposition on the campuses to the Gaza genocide. It takes place after over 186,000 people in Gaza have been massacred by Israel, according to an estimate by The Lancet from July. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that everyone in northern Gaza “is at imminent risk of dying,” while there is a massive and unprecedented amount of photographic and video evidence both from the victims and killers themselves on social media documenting the genocide, which could correctly be described as the first live-streamed genocide in history.

Iyengar, a second-year electrical engineering Ph.D. student, was summarily banned from campus under the bogus justification that he presented an immediate risk of violence, with the administration falsely claiming his article supports “terrorism.” This was done solely on the basis of anonymous allegations by Zionist students’ claims that statements in the article “could be interpreted as a call for more violent or destructive forms of protest at MIT.” The rule for interim banning of students is ostensibly aimed only at those who actually present a risk of violence, like those suspected of rape, murder or assault. This is clearly not the case.

Essentially no evidence has been presented beyond a People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine poster being used as an illustration in Iyengar’s article. The administration falsely used this to claim that the article supported terrorism. The banning opens a veritable Pandora’s Box of avenues for censorship, meaning all manner of media from textbooks and dictionaries which have pictures of real or supposed “terrorist” organizations to documentaries and non-fiction books and even news articles in the mainstream press could be banned.

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Criminalizing UNRWA: How Israel Is Delegitimizing the United Nations

On October 28, the Israeli Knesset passed a second reading of two bills that effectively ban the United Nations agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) from carrying out “any activity” in Israel and occupied Palestine.

Simply put, the decision is catastrophic, because UNRWA is the main international body responsible for the welfare of millions of Palestinians throughout the occupied territories, and throughout much of the region.

Israel followed its decision by attacking and damaging an UNRWA office in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. It was the Israeli government’s way of demonstrating its seriousness regarding the matter.

This is not the first time that Israel has pursued an anti-UNRWA agenda and, contrary to claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israel officials, the decision is not linked to the current genocidal war on Gaza, or the unfounded claims that UNRWA supports ‘terrorism’.

An independent review commissioned by the UN revealed that Israel “made public claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations”, but that it “has yet to provide supporting evidence of this.”

Israeli claims, however, did a great deal of damage to the organization, as 13 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany and Italy, withheld badly needed funds which were helping Gaza stave off a horrific famine.

Eventually, most of these countries reinstated their financial support, though without apologizing to the Palestinians who were adversely impacted by these countries’ initial, unfair decision.

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Palestinians will not be allowed to return to homes in northern Gaza, says IDF

Israeli ground forces are getting closer to “the complete evacuation” of northern Gaza and residents will not be allowed to return home, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said, in what appears to be the first official acknowledgment from Israel it is systematically removing Palestinians from the area.

In a media briefing on Tuesday night, the IDF Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that since troops had been forced to enter some areas twice, such as Jabaliya camp, “there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes”.

He added that humanitarian aid would be allowed to “regularly” enter the south of the territory but not the north, since there are “no more civilians left”.

International humanitarian law experts have said that such actions would amount to the war crimes of forcible transfer and the use of food as a weapon.

On Thursday, an IDF spokesperson said Brig Gen Cohen’s comments had been taken out of context during a discussion about Jabaliya, and did not “reflect the IDF’s objectives and values.” The spokesperson also said that the briefing had been on background, and the brigadier general should not have been quoted in Hebrew media reports that emerged.

The Israeli army and government have repeatedly denied trying to force the remaining population of northern Gaza to flee to the relative safety of the south during a month-long renewed offensive and tightened siege. Residents still clinging on in the north have said the new operation has created the worst conditions of the war to date. Israel said the push is necessary to combat regrouped Hamas cells.

Rights groups and aid agencies have alleged that despite the denials, Israel appears to be carrying out a version of the so-called “generals’ plan”, which proposes giving civilians a deadline to leave and then treating anyone who remains as a combatant.

It is unclear how many people remain in northern Gaza; last month, the UN estimated there were about 400,000 civilians unable or unwilling to follow Israeli evacuation orders. On Wednesday social media footage showed waves of several dozen displaced people carrying children and rucksacks and walking south through flattened areas of Gaza City.

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Report Details Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Campaign in Beit Lahia, Northern Gaza

A report from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published on Wednesday detailed the situation in Beit Lahia, a city in northern Gaza near the Israeli border where Israeli forces are implementing an ethnic cleansing campaign.

At the beginning of October, Israel ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in northern Gaza to head south. Many ignored the order since there was nowhere safe to go, and the Israeli military focused its renewed assault on the north on Beith Lahia and neighboring Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, where it imposed a full siege to starve out civilians.

The Israeli military has said it forcibly expelled 55,000 Palestinians from the Jabalia refugee camp, and it has no intention of allowing them back. According to Haaretz, only a few thousand civilians remain in Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun.

“There is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes,” IDF spokesman Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told reporters on Tuesday.

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