Tag: israel

Israel Pounds South Lebanon Town With White Phosphorous

Amid growing fear of a full-scale invasion, Israeli warplanes carried out airstrikes against the southern Lebanon town of Khiam, using incendiary white phosphorous bombs, according to the National News Agency.

Israel has not commented on the use of white phosphorous in a populated civilian area, nor is it likely to. The extent of any casualties is not known at the present.

In recent weeks, the use of phosphorous, even including flinging fireballs into Lebanon with medieval trebuchets, has become a go-to Israeli strategy. At the time, Israel maintained setting fires was a security measure, clearing brush in the agricultural areas of southern Lebanon.

Employing white phosphorous is not actually illegal, but the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons severely regulates its use against civilian targets. Israel is a signatory to the convention, but in its frequent warfare with neighboring countries, does not appear to view the regulation as restricting its use of the substance.

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The Gaza Project Exposes Israel’s ‘Chilling Pattern’ of Killing Journalists

With more than 100 media professionals – nearly all of them Palestinian – killed in Gaza since October, a group of 50 reporters from 13 international organizations this week shared the results of a new investigative journalism initiative aimed at exposing the deadly toll Israel’s onslaught has taken on those reporting it to the world.

The Gaza Project – led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories – “analyzed nearly 100 cases of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, as well as other cases in which members of the press have been allegedly targeted, threatened, or injured since October 7,” when Hamas-led attacks on Israel left more than 1,100 people dead and over 240 others kidnapped.

“Faced with what is being reported as the record number of journalists killed, Forbidden Stories, whose mission is to pursue the work of journalists who are killed because of their work, set out to investigate the targeting of journalists,” the group said.

“For four months, Forbidden Stories and its partners investigated the circumstances of their killings, as well as those who have been targeted, threatened, and injured in the West Bank and Gaza,” it added. “These investigations point to a chilling pattern and suggest some journalists may have been targeted even though they were identifiable as press.”

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White House Warns Lebanon: US Can’t Control Or Restrain Israel If Offensive Starts

Among the more interesting positions which the Biden White House has recently articulated to Arab allies in the Middle East is that the Untied States cannot restrain Israel if it decides to launch new offensives, namely against Lebanon.

Axios has revealed that during his trip to Beirut last week, Biden’s special envoy Amos Hochstein warned the Lebanese government, “The US won’t be able to hold Israel back if the situation on the border continues to escalate and that Hezbollah needs to indirectly negotiate with Israel instead of ratcheting up tensions.”

“The situation is serious. What President Biden wants to do is to avoid a further escalation to a greater war,” Hochstein had additionally said. “It will take everyone’s interest in ending this conflict now. And we believe that there is a pathway diplomatically to do it. If the sides agree to it.”

But what do the Lebanese see of US foreign policy? And what do Arab leaders and their population see? Israel has for decades topped the list of US foreign aid recipients, receiving a consistent $3+ billion annually. Washington regularly makes arms deals with Tel Aviv to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars as well.

Some Israeli leaders have lately gone so far as to admit that Israel’s military might not be able to persist in its Gaza operations without the steady flow of US arms and ammo.

But the US has even reached out to Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, via intermediaries, to warn that it can’t hold Israel back in the event of escalation.

“During his meeting with Berri in Beirut, Hochsteim asked the speaker of the Lebanese Parliament to pass a message to Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, that his assumption that the U.S. controls Israel is wrong, the sources said,” Axios wrote.

“According to the sources, Hochstein said the U.S. won’t be able to hold Israel back if the situation on the border continues to escalate and that Hezbollah needs to indirectly negotiate with Israel instead of ratcheting up tensions,” the report continued.

The US and European partners, especially France, have recently sought to entice and pressure the Lebanese government to reign in Hezbollah, something it has very limited capability in doing. The Lebanese Army is in reality almost powerless in dealing with Hezbollah, also as it has no air force to speak of. 

The US itself has imposed sanctions and limits on what aircraft Lebanon can obtain, fearing that it could be used in a conflict with Israel.

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“Overkill”: Dems Bristle After AIPAC Spends ‘Unprecedented’ Amount To Defeat Bowman

While Rep. Jamal Bowman, a moron, may have sealed his fate after pulling a fire alarm to delay a House vote on a congressional stopgap bill, the ‘squad’ member’s Democratic primary loss to ‘moderate’ challenger George Latimer has raised eyebrows for other reasons.

Chief among them is what Axios described as an ‘unprecedented financial investment’ by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which spent over $14.5 million to defeat Bowman, mostly via TV ads attacking the incumbent.

While Bowman also faced opposition from a ‘Crypto Super PAC‘ – and Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss posting on X that “this is what happens when you pick a fight with the crypto army,” Democrats tell Axios that AIPAC’s enormous ad spend may have also been meant to intimidate Democrats who are critical of the Jewish state.

“It might change how they talk about [Israel],” one moderate House Democrat told the outlet, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“The number is gross … I don’t like it,” another House Democrat told Axios, calling the figure “Overkill,” and adding “If anything that much money could backfire, because then you get people that are like, ‘This is just wrong.”

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EXPOSED: Israeli Documents Reveal Concerted Effort By Government to Put Out Zionist Propaganda in the US Media

Amichai Chikli, a member of the Likud Party and a minister in the Israeli government, has been leading a campaign to spread pro-Israeli propaganda in the United State corporate media. 

According to a report by The Guardian, Chikli was brought before the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to inform elected officials on what could be done about the growing set of anti-war protests from young people all over universities across the US.  

Chikli and his team relaunched the “Concert”, a controversial program initially branded as Kela Shlomo in Hebrew. The program has the ostensive aim of carrying out what the Israeli regime has deemed as ““mass consciousness activities” primarily targeted largely at the US and Europe.” This specific iteration is part of a broader public relations drive to target US institutions of higher learning and change the definition of antisemitism according to US law. 

Concert is currently known as Voices of Israel. Previously, it teamed up with groups leading a campaign to enact so-called “anti-BDS” state laws that sanction Americans for participating in boycotts or other non-violent demonstrations against Israel.

The latest iteration of the program is a concerted effort, often run covertly, by the Jewish state to push back against university protests, human rights organizations and other dissenting voices. 

Voices’ most recent activities were carried out through non-profit organizations and other bodies that often do not reveal their donor information. From October up until May, Chikli has presided over at least $8.6m for a budget that’s allocated towards government advocacy to change the public debate.

One American pro-Zionist group that has been working with Chikli’s ministry, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, or ISGAP, was able to achieve a major victory in recent times. The ISCAP allegedly received the bulk of its funding in 2018 from the Israeli agency that was in charge of operating Concert. At an April 7 event at the Palm Beach Country Club, ISGAP boasted about a congressional public relations victory that it achieved. 

In this instance, they were referring to hearings led by Republicans such as New York Congressman Elise Stefanik designed to grill prominent university presidents such as then-Harvard President Claudine Gay and her counterparts in other elite universities. 

Gay ended up resigning earlier this year for engaging in alleged acts of plagiarism. 

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Israel’s top court rules army must draft ultra-Orthodox Jews

The Israeli High Court ruled on 25 June that male Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) who are eligible for service must be drafted into the military, a decision that threatens the already fragile unity in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. 

The High Court ruling stipulated that in the absence of a law distinguishing Haredi seminary students from other eligible military draftees, mandatory service applies to the ultra-Orthodox just as it does to all other Israeli citizens. 

According to the court, there is no longer any legal basis for the Israeli government to grant blanket exemptions to Haredim students nor to instruct the military not to draft them.

“This is a historic victory for the rule of law and the principle of equality in the burden of military service,” said the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, which has been petitioning for the court to rule in favor of ending Haredi exemption from army service.

“We call on the government and the defense minister to implement the decision without delay, to comply with the High Court’s order, and to work immediately to draft yeshiva students,” the statement added. 

Ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews of military age have been able to avoid compulsory enlistment into the army for decades by enrolling in yeshivas (religious schools) and obtaining repeated one-year service deferrals until they reach the age of military exemption.

The issue has been a source of great tension in Israel lately, particularly following the start of the war – as many in the government believe that the burden of service falls on all Israelis. Others, namely the leaders of far-right religious parties on which the coalition relies, have been pushing for continued exemptions of the Haredim. The government has for months been attempting to reach a consensus on the matter. 

Opposition leaders from both right-wing and left-wing parties praised the Supreme Court ruling. 

Head of the Yisrael Beytenu party, Avigdor Lieberman, congratulated the court for taking “a significant step on the way to historical change,” noting that the army’s losses from the fighting in Gaza will require more personnel. 

“Congratulations on a just decision of the High Court of Justice. Where there is no government there is justice,” said the leader of the Israeli Labor Party, Yair Golan. 

Benny Gantz, National Unity leader and former war cabinet member, blamed Netanyahu for seeking “solutions for maintaining the coalition” rather than dealing with the severe enlistment crisis Israel currently faces as a result of the war. 

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Will Biden Drag Americans Into a War in Lebanon?

It was September 1983, and a young senator named Joe Biden had a message for President Ronald Reagan. “I would not support any authorization for troops in Lebanon of any duration absent much more clearly defined goals and a reasonable prospect of attaining those goals,” Biden said, commenting on a proposed congressional war powers resolution.

U.S. Marines had been deployed to Lebanon as part of peacekeeping mission in the wake of an Israeli invasion aimed at destroying Palestinian militias, and Congress was debating whether to continue the mission. A month after Biden’s warning, a truck bomb killed 241 American and 58 French peacekeepers in their barracks, and Reagan pulled out the Americans.

Today, Biden is considering sending U.S. forces back into the fray—not as bystanders but as direct combatants—with far less permission from Congress.

Since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, a parallel border conflict has been raging in the north. The Lebanese militia Hezbollah and the Israeli army are shelling into each other’s territory, forcing around 100,000 people on each side of the border out of their homes. Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, has said that it will continue until an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire is reached in Gaza. Israeli officials are considering a “blitzkrieg” offensive to neuter Hezbollah.

Last year, Biden dissuaded Israel from launching an invasion of Lebanon. He has also dispatched U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, an Israeli army veteran who previously secured an Israeli-Lebanese border agreement, to mediate between the two sides. But while he’s discouraging an Israeli invasion, Biden is also promising to back one up if it happens.

CNN reported on Friday that the Biden administration was offering “assurances” of U.S. military support to Israel if a major war breaks out, “though the US would not deploy American troops to the ground in such a scenario.” Then, on Monday, Politico reported that Biden was contemplating “more direct military support” if Israel comes under “severe duress.”

And that’s a real likelihood. Separately, a U.S. official told CNN last week that Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system “will be overwhelmed” in the event of a full-on missile war, according to U.S. assessments. A week ago, Hezbollah published a video of one of its drones hovering over the Israeli port city of Haifa.

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The U.S. Power Structure is Blindly Dedicated to Israel

Recently there was an important event at Columbia Law School. The school’s law review published a piece on a sweeping legal theory of the Nakba by Harvard law student Rabea Eghbariah — and the board of the law review stepped in in unprecedented fashion to shut down the publication online. After the Intercept reported that the website had been “nuked,” the authoritarian move became an embarrassment; and the piece was restored. Though students obviously feel chilled.

This story reminds us that the U.S. establishment is firmly and blindly pro-Israel. The board that squashed the students included operators of the highest order: professor Gillian Metzger, who also serves in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; Justice Department senior counsel Lewis Yelin; and Ginger Anders, a former assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General.

We used to call people like this the ruling class. These high appointees understand what American values are, and today American values are standing by Israel even as it massacres thousands of children. These values surely have to do with the importance of Zionist donors to Joe Biden and universities, but they go beyond that to the makeup of the U.S. establishment. Pro-Israel voices — including Jewish Zionists — are a significant element of corporate culture. They are a generational force. Young progressives and young Jews are rejecting Israel. But they aren’t in the power structure.

One of the most telling stories about the establishment came and went last November. Two dozen leading law firms sent a letter to the leading law schools, including Harvard and Columbia, saying that they would not hire students from law schools that failed to crack down on antisemitism. And one of those firms, Davis Polk, rescinded job offers to three students who had taken part in pro-Palestinian protests. The letter said:

“We look to you to ensure your students who hope to join our firms after graduation are prepared to be an active part of workplace communities that have zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses.”

A partner at Sullivan & Cromwell told the New York Times that Jewish students feel “actually scared,” “threatened,” and “betrayed.” 

The letter was a shot across the bow of prestige schools well before Congress brought down the boom on the Harvard and Penn presidents in December. After all, the function of these schools — the reason young people clamor to get into them — is to gain employment in prestigious jobs upon graduation.

Just a week after the letter — shockingly — Columbia suspended the Palestinian solidarity groups Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

The law firms’ letter was “spearheaded,” the firm Paul, Weiss bragged at the time, by two Jewish chairs at two white-shoe firms (Joe Shenker, former chair of Sullivan and Cromwell, and Brad Karp, current chair at Paul, Weiss).

The letter was published at a time when many corporate leaders were issuing condemnations of the Hamas attack on Israel. Paul, Weiss chair Brad Karp explained to the Times that he was disappointed that more leaders weren’t doing so — and that being for Israel was no different than other great progressive causes, civil rights and women’s rights included.

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Israel bombed southern Lebanon with banned white phosphorus munitions: Report

Israeli forces in recent months have targeted forests and populated areas in southern Lebanon with internationally banned white phosphorus bombs and munitions, local media reports say.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported that the most recent attacks occurred near the town of Kfar Kila.

Israeli forces are also carrying out “a search operation” near Kfar Kila from their base in Metula, a town on the northern side of the 1948 Israeli-occupied territories.

The report further says the attacks endangered civilians’ lives and caused massive fires in the region.

Israel continues to use white phosphorus munitions in south Lebanon, causing lasting damage and driving villagers away.

A series of reports have said that white phosphorus attacks are “putting civilians at grave risk” and “contributing to displacement”.

A recent investigation by Qatar-based al-Jazeera found that Israel had dropped 117 phosphoric bombs on southern Lebanon, striking at least 32 towns and villages between October and March.

The impacted area spanned nearly the entirety of Lebanon’s 100km southern border with the occupied territories. Israel’s repeated use of white phosphorous has drawn the ire of international humanitarian organizations.

On March 19, Oxfam called on the administration of US President Joe Biden to “immediately suspend arms transfers to Israel.”

Israel reportedly used US-supplied white phosphorus munitions in an October attack in southern Lebanon, according to a Washington Post investigation in December.

Photos and videos verified by international rights groups and reviewed by The Post show the characteristic ribbons of white phosphorus smoke falling over Dheira, a southern Lebanese village, on October 16.

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Top US Law Schools Present Undeniable Evidence Of Israel’s Gaza Genocide

On May 15, the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR), a U.S.-based advocacy group training undergraduates in human rights law at colleges and universities worldwide to counter abusive state, corporate, or private conduct, published a 105-page analysis of international law and its application to Israel’s military actions since October 7, 2023. Drawing on extensive evidence and historical legal precedents, the findings leave no doubt that Israel has committed horrific breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention in Gaza.

A collaborative effort by some of the West’s most prestigious law schools, the report has now been submitted to the United Nations. The institution has yet to comment on the UNHR investigation’s irrefutable, bombshell contents. The mainstream media has also remained silent. Given the complicity of Western journalists in whitewashing and justifying unconscionable crimes in Gaza, this is not surprising. However, the silence has been so pervasive that the report may have even gone unnoticed by committed Palestine solidarity activists.

This silence is itself an injustice, as the UNHR has produced a singular, indispensable resource for factually, legally, and morally refuting the arguments and assertions of Zionists and their allies, old and new. The report details, in devastating forensic detail, the variety of deplorable, murderous ways in which the Israeli state and its operatives at every level are culpable for committing genocide in Gaza, from public expressions of “blatant and unequivocal dehumanization and cruelty” to military actions explicitly designed to maximize Palestinian slaughter.

As defined in the Genocide Convention of 1948 and interpreted by international courts and tribunals, the crime of genocide requires that a perpetrator kill, seriously harm, or inflict conditions of life calculated to destroy a group, in whole or in part, with the intent to destroy that group. Thomas Becker, UNHR’s legal director, tells MintPress News: “What’s happening now is both unprecedented and, in many ways, a textbook case of genocide.”

Five days after the publication of the UNHR’s landmark investigation, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan announced his intent to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for numerous crimes against humanity and atrocities committed since October 7, 2023. While it remains uncertain whether they will ever face justice, the Network’s report should inspire governments and citizens worldwide to work relentlessly towards achieving that righteous goal.

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