Tag: israel

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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EU’s Borrell Says ‘No Justification For These Massacres’ After Israeli Strike Kills Nearly 100 Gazans

The Washington Post and several international outlets are reporting another mass casualty event in Gaza – this time a reported Israeli airstrike on a school in Gaza City sheltering refugees. Gaza’s Civil Defense Force says the attack killed at least 93 people, including women and children.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it targeted a Hamas command center and has accused Gaza sources of inflating the death toll. However, gruesome images show many mangled and charred civilian bodies strewn all over the ground in the strike aftermath.

Gaza officials say the al-Taba’een school in Gaza City was housing about 6,000 internally displaced Palestinians before it was struck. Hamas-run emergency services have called it a “horrific massacre” and European officials have responded with condemnation.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed shock and horror, saying on X: “Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike, with reportedly dozens of Palestinian victims. At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There’s no justification for these massacres.”

“The recovery operations are indescribable … The schoolyard was filled with bodies,” one local emergency response officials has said. The IDF has reacted to the widespread reports by saying the information in the media does “not align” with its own intelligence and information. 

The IDF claimed that terrorists have been “operating within a Hamas command and control center embedded in the Al-Taba’een school” and charged that Hamas has again used civilian population as “human shields”. 

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Zionism: Managing Its Demise

It is increasingly becoming clear–even to some Western observers—that the Zionist project has run its course. It had an extraordinary run, but it has now reached the end of its settler-colonial track.

The creation of this exclusionary settler-colonial Jewish state was a historical anomaly, among the greatest blunders of Western civilization in the twentieth century. Despite the deep alliance—between Western Jews and their Western tormentors—that established Israel in the mid-20th century, this Jewish state could not in the long run resist the deep logic of history. A few sober Israelis too can read the writing on the wall.

At the same time, no one doubts that Israel is capable of inflicting devastating harm on the Western Islamicate. Some members of Israel’s extremist right-wing government, steeled by messianic delusions, are threatening to invoke the Samson option—b’rerat Shimshon. For sure, Israel could kill several million Iranians and Arabs with its arsenal of neutron bombs. But where would that leave the Jewish state?

Would Netanyahu, Biden and MBS be flying to a new Iranian capital—since they will have obliterated Tehran—to celebrate their victory over Iran, and then fly to Riyadh to seal an enduring Saudi-Israeli alliance, guaranteed for a thousand years by the USA, after Trump’s victory in this great democracy’s last election. It is likely that the inimitable Thomas Friedman will be rooting for this scenario in his next New York Times op-ed.

In order to prevent Israel from launching its neutron bombs, the Western powers that birthed and nurtured the Zionist project must now take responsibility for their historic blunder, and manage the transition of this abnormal Jewish state to a normal one that accords equal rights to all its inhabitants—Jews and Arabs alike. Western powers have shielded this rogue state for more than 76 years. It is now time to make amends.

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Zionism on the Brink: The Gaza War Beyond Netanyahu 

The idea that the war on Gaza is essentially waged and sustained by and for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, for long, dominated political analyses on the subject.

The notion is often kept alive by public opinion inside Israel.

Most polls produced since the start of the Israeli genocide on Gaza suggest that an overwhelming majority of Israelis believe that Netanyahu’s decisions are motivated by personal, political and familial interests.

This conclusion, however, is too convenient and not entirely accurate. It wrongly assumes that the Israeli people oppose Netanyahu’s war in Gaza though, in reality, they have been quite approving of all tactics used by the Israeli army, so far.

For example, over 300 days into the war, 69 percent of all Israelis support Netanyahu’s desperate tactics of assassinations, including the killing of Hamas’ top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran on July 31.

While Netanyahu’s decision to target a political leader reflects his own failure and desperation, how is one to explain the Israeli people’s enthusiasm for the expansion of the circle of violence?

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Israel Airstrike Kills Hamas Leader in South Lebanon Port City of Sidon

Israel carried out an airstrike against a car in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon on Friday evening, killing Hamas leader Samer Mahmoud al-Haj. A bodyguard, who has not been identified, was critically wounded.

Haj worked in a nearby Palestinian refugee camp called Ayn al-Hilweh. The Israeli military and Shin Bet issued a joint statement claiming he was responsible for directing attacks against Israel and was “training terrorists” at the refugee camp.

Sidon is located deep in southern Lebanon, almost 38 miles over the border. Israel has been carrying out strikes against Sidon this year, although most have been against Hezbollah, not Hamas.

Israeli strikes against Hamas targets inside Lebanese territory are relatively rare, but often target high profile Hamas members, as in January when Saleh al-Arouri was killed. Arouri had been in charge of the critical hostage negotiations with Israel throughout the Gaza War. He was struck down in an attack in Beirut, the Lebanese capital city.

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US To Release $3.5 Billion in Military Assistance for Israel

The State Department is set to release $3.5 billion in Foreign Military Financing to Israel. The massive transfer of funds comes as the White House is asking Israel to investigate claims of rape in its detention centers for Palestinians.

CNN reported speaking with multiple officials who confirmed the funds will be released. The money was allocated by Congress in the $95 billion foreign military aid bill that included $61 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel.

Foreign Military Financing (FMF) is a State Department program that gives US taxpayer dollars to foreign governments to purchase weapons from American arms dealers. However, Tel Aviv is allowed to use some of the FMF funds on Israeli-made weapons.

As the funds are used to contract with arms deals, the weapons are typically not delivered immediately.

Israel is heavily dependent on the US to arm its military, giving Washington significant leverage over Tel Aviv. Over the ten-month Israeli onslaught in Gaza, the White House has resisted domestic pressure to condition arm sales to Israel.

The release of funds will likely be viewed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a green light for Israel to continue its brutal treatment of the Palestinians.

One point where the White House could have used the FMF funds as leverage is to push Israel to investigate the rape occurring in its detention facilities. Late last month, Israeli military police arrested several soldiers accused of using sodomy as a means of torture that left the victim bleeding and unable to walk.

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