Tag: israel

‘One Meal Every Other Day’ – Aid Agencies Say Israel Blocking 83% of Gaza Food Aid

People in Gaza are only eating one meal every other day as 83 percent of required food aid does not make it into the besieged enclave due to Israel’s blockade, aid organizations have said.

“While Israeli military attacks on Gaza intensify, lifesaving food, medicine, medical supplies, fuel, and tents have been systematically blocked from entering for almost a year,” a statement signed by 15 organizations including CARE International, Oxfam, Islamic Relief, the Norwegian Refugee Council and KinderUSA, said.

This is “driving a humanitarian disaster, with the entire population of Gaza facing hunger and disease, and almost half a million at risk of starvation.”

The organizations said “83% of required food aid does not make it into Gaza, up from 34% in 2023,” emphasizing that this “reduction means people in Gaza have gone from having an average of two meals a day to just one meal every other day.”

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A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam

The date is October, November, or December 2024, or maybe early 2025. The Israeli military has just launched a new operation throughout northern Gaza — “Operation Order and Clean-up,” we’ll call it. The army orders the temporary evacuation of all Palestinian residents north of the Netzarim Corridor “for their personal safety,” explaining that “the IDF is expected to take significant action in Gaza City in the coming days, and wants to avoid harming civilians.”

The order is similar to the one the military issued on Oct. 13, 2023 to the more than 1 million Palestinians living in Gaza City and its environs at the time. But it’s clear to everyone that this time, Israel is planning something else entirely.

Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant remain tight-lipped about the real goals of the operation, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, as well as other ministers on the far right, declare them openly. Here, they cite a program that the “Forum of Reserve Commanders and Fighters,” spearheaded by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, proposed just a few weeks ago: ordering all residents of northern Gaza to leave within a week, before imposing a full siege on the area, including shutting off all supplies of water, food, and fuel, until those who remain surrender or die of starvation.

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Hezbollah vows ‘reckoning’ with Israel

Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel after a wave of pager explosions killed several members of the Lebanon-based Islamist group and left thousands of others injured on Tuesday.

At least 11 people were killed and around 3,000 injured when pagers – which Hezbollah relies on to make messages harder to intercept – started exploding across Lebanon and Syria. Among the wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini, as well as a number of top Hezbollah officials.

While media reports have suggested the explosions were orchestrated by Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, West Jerusalem has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

In a statement on Wednesday, Hezbollah said it holds “the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression.” It also pledged to continue its military operations against Israel in support of Hamas in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza despite the pager blasts.

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Company Behind Walkie-Talkie Devices Transformed into Bombs Also Supplies the U.S. Military

One day after pagers detonated across Lebanon, reportedly killing twelve people, including at least two children and four healthcare workers, a second wave of explosions has been reported across the country. Today’s detonations were reportedly through the manipulation of walkie-talkies made by ICOM, a Japanese firm whose American branch also serves as a significant supplier to the U.S. military. The combined confirmed death toll has already reached 26, and roughly 3,000 people have been reported injured.

The Wednesday explosions are primarily linked to the ICOM IC-V82, an electronic receiver with both military and civilian uses.

ICOM, based in Osaka, Japan, has a global footprint. U.S. government disclosures show that the company’s American affiliate has received at least $8.2 million in contracts with the U.S. federal government since 2008.

This includes an “urgent order” contract with the U.S. General Services Administration which was updated twelve days ago, a spot alongside Motorola Solutions in a potentially $495 million contract selling “land mobile radio supplies” to the U.S. Army in June 2018, and subcontracts through both the weapons giant Lockheed Martin and the controversial defense contractor Atlantic Diving Supply (ADS).

The series of explosions in Lebanon have raised concerns about the future of war that includes infiltration of supply chains and limitless exploits through electronically connected devices.

The attacks will likely fuel increased scrutiny over military and civilian supply chain security, which has long been a potential vulnerability.

The Pentagon and ICOM were contacted for comment but were not immediately available to respond. If a statement is provided, this post will be updated.

In addition to its sales to the U.S. military, ICOM America is also a significant contractor with the U.S. Coast Guard, including through a $2.2 million sub-award under General Dynamics in 2015. ICOM also sold its radios to the civilian Federal Aviation Administration as recently as October.

Other governments worldwide purchase ICOM equipment. United Kingdom records show that the British government purchased radio communication devices from the firm last year.

The exploding walkie-talkies were first reported by several Lebanese outlets, NBC News, and the Associated Press. The AP reported that its journalists heard the exploding walkie-talkies at a funeral today for four people killed by pagers yesterday. Other outlets noted that devices detonated in the hands of individuals who were not yet named.

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MORE Tech Devices Exploding Across Residential Areas Of Lebanon As Israeli Terror Attack Continues

After thousands of people were injured and many were killed by a wave of exploding pager devices on Tuesday, another attack was launched Wednesday.

Senior U.S. officials and Hezbollah leadership have both concluded Israel was obviously behind the deadly bombardment.

The first set of explosions appeared to only trigger beepers or pagers to detonate, but Wednesday’s bombings are reportedly coming from walkie-talkies, vehicles and even home solar energy systems.

Some of the devices were reportedly set off during a funeral for some of the people who were killed in Tuesday’s attack.

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Pagers in Hezbollah attack came from Budapest, rigged with 1-2 ounces of explosives: report

The pagers that blew up in a highly coordinated – and deadly – attack against Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon Tuesday came from Budapest and were rigged with as little as one to two ounces of highly explosive material, according to a report.

The devices all exploded simultaneously Tuesday afternoon after receiving a message that triggered the detonation, killing at least nine people — including an 8-year-old girl — and wounding nearly 3,000 more. Among those injured was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon.

Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group that the US has designated a terrorist organization, ordered more than 3,000 of the latest models from Gold Apollo in Taiwan — most of them being the company’s AP924 model, American and other officials briefed on the operation told The New York Times.

Gold Apollo said Wednesday it authorized its brand on the pagers, but claimed that a company in Hungary manufactured them.

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How Does Israel Justify Genocide? It Starts in the Schools

In The Black Image in the White Mind, historian George M. Frederickson writes, “In the years immediately before and after 1800, white Americans often revealed by their words and actions that they viewed [Black people] as a permanently alien and unassimilable element of the population.” Within the context of white American domination, anti-Black racist stereotypes framed Black people as inherently unfit, innately problematic and divorced from the category of the human, a category that is synonymous with whiteness.

The French-Tunisian scholar Albert Memmi, in The Colonizer and the Colonized, understood these racist rationalizations as a series of negations, observing: “The colonized is not this, is not that. [They are] never considered in a positive light; or if [they are], the quality which is conceded is the result of a psychological or ethical failing.” Within these racist binary regimes, it is necessary that a specific group functions as “other.”

Throughout the world, there are groups that are deemed “other,” and their “otherness” is imposed by those who control dominant forms of discourse — those who have the representational power to demean, to marginalize and demonize. Historically, schools and religious institutions have helped to underwrite such dehumanizing discourse.

Nurit Peled-Elhanan is a retired lecturer in language education at Hebrew University and at the David Yellin Academic College in Jerusalem, and the author of several books. In this exclusive interview, she discusses how Israeli schoolbooks (and by extension, Israeli schools) powerfully frame anti-Palestinian discourse and inculcate Israeli children with suspicion, fear and hatred of Palestinians. Peled-Elhanan’s work provides a powerful analysis of the relationship between Israeli state pedagogical power and racist, anti-Palestinian ideology.

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Israel seeks bill to allow police to probe ‘incitement to terrorism’ without approval

A new bill advancing through the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee would allow Israel Police to investigate suspected incitement to terrorism without needing approval from the State Attorney’s Office.

According to the Times of Israel, this proposal has raised alarms among civil rights groups and opposition MKs, who argue it could limit free speech.

Currently, such investigations require State Attorney approval to prevent overly broad interpretations of the law that could infringe on free expression. In July, State Attorney Amit Aisman revealed that police had initiated several investigations into incitement or speech-related offences without proper authorisation, bypassing his office’s directives.

Introduced by far-right MK Limor Son Har Melech, of the ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit Party, the new clause in the legislation is part of a broader bill that aims to tighten restrictions on incitement, extending the ban to include praise for individuals who commit terrorist acts, not just the acts themselves, reported the Times of Israel. 

If enacted, the law would enable police to act on formal complaints “or in any other manner.”

The bill passed its first reading in the Knesset in July, but Son Har Melech is now pushing for even stricter measures. A committee hearing on the bill, scheduled for today, was postponed due to scheduling conflicts with officials from the State Attorney’s Office and the National Security Ministry. The hearing is expected to be rescheduled soon.

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Mossad Planted Bombs in 5,000 Hezbollah Pagers Months Before Deadly Detonations: Report

Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency has been accused of planting explosives in 5,000 pagers imported by Hezbollah, setting the stage for devastating detonations across Lebanon, according to Reuters, citing a senior Lebanese security source.

The carefully orchestrated attack targeted Hezbollah terrorists, killing at least 11 people, and more than 4,000 have been injured, including the Iranian envoy to Beirut, marking the “biggest security breach” the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror network has faced since its ongoing war with Israel began.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini, has suffered severe injuries and has lost one eye. The question now is how an ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran has a Hezbollah pager.

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Israel’s conduct in the war will consume us all

Hamas terrorists were responsible for the deaths of 1,139 Israelis – mostly civilians – on October 7, 2023. The Israeli government was fully within its rights to bring the terrorists to justice.

But nearing the one-year mark of Israel’s resultant war against Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may now be an impediment to peace rather than providing a path to it.

No one can question Israel’s right to seek justice for Hamas’s bloody massacre on 10/7 and few challenge Washington for providing military support to Israel as it seeks to punish Hamas. Yet it is entirely reasonable to question how Israel is conducting its operations, especially if it becomes apparent the Israeli government pursues a course of action that is ineffective — or worse — is making Israel less secure.

I have argued, as far back as November of last year on CNN that Netanyahu has been using military power to pursue a political objective that cannot succeed: the total elimination of Hamas. The reason is simple: one cannot kill an idea with bombs and bullets.

Israel unequivocally has the single most powerful military in the Middle East. In the aftermath of suffering a terrorist attack that caused large scale civilian casualties, it is an understandable and seductive temptation to use that military power to crush one’s enemy. But using a hammer to do a job more suited to a surgeon’s knife was always going to produce results that were anywhere from ineffective to outright self-defeating.

The task facing the Israeli government following 10/7 was monumental: how to bring justice to the political and military force of Hamas (numbering somewhere around 30,000 fighters) who were interwoven within a civilian population of approximately 2.3 million? Taking no action was never an option, so the only question was how best to conduct lethal military operations to justly degrade Hamas.

Doing the job right would have been costly to the Israeli Defense Forces in terms of both time and troops lost. Generally, the IDF could have cut the Gaza strip into sections, isolating one from the rest. They could have screened and then temporarily relocated all the civilians into other secured areas, and then methodically moved through the cordoned area to either capture or kill all the fighters. Once an area was cleared, the civilian residents could have returned, and the IDF would move to the next cordoned area.

Collateral damage would have resulted everywhere Hamas fighters chose to stand and fight, but it would have been limited. Once an area had been cleansed of terrorists, the area would be secured by other troops to limit other Hamas fighters from returning. Meanwhile the civilian population would then be allowed to return and have a safe place to live.

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