Tag: israel

Senate Rejects Bids To Block Arms Sales To Israel

The Senate voted on July 30 to reject two resolutions that would have blocked arms sales to Israel in response to concerns over civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip since Israeli forces began military action against the Hamas terror group.

Senators rejected two motions introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would have stopped the export of over 5,000 bombs and guidance kits and 20,000 firearms. The resolutions failed by 73–24 and 70–27, respectively, in the 100-member chamber.

Sanders, who aligns with the Democrats, said on the evening of July 30 before the vote: “American taxpayer dollars are being used to starve children, bomb schools, kill civilians, and support the cruelty of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his criminal ministers. That, Mr. President, is why I have brought these two resolutions of disapproval to block offensive arms sales to Israel.”

Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), who voted against both motions, called the resolutions misguided, and said before the vote that if they were adopted, it would “reinstate the failed policies of the Biden administration, and would abandon America’s closest ally in the Middle East.”

Risch said that the situation in the Gaza Strip and the impact on its residents was the fault of Hamas, who he said “use the people of Gaza as human shields.”

“These are not good people, and it is in the interest of America and the world to see this terrorist group destroyed,” he said.

Israel began its military operations against Hamas after the terror group’s deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, when Hamas militants killed about 1,200 civilians in Israel and kidnapped 251. According to the Israeli government website, 49 of those who were abducted that day are still being held in captivity. One additional hostage is still being held in Gaza, who has been held since 2014.

The Gaza Strip’s Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health reported that more than 60,000 people have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in these casualty figures, and The Epoch Times cannot verify their accuracy.

Throughout the conflict, Israel has said that it tries to avoid harming the civilian population and only targets Hamas terrorists.

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Iran Deporting Millions Of Afghan Migrants After Capturing Alleged Israeli Spies

It would seem that mass deportations in the name of national security is not an issue limited to western countries.  Over the past few weeks Iran has drawn the attention of the UN and a number of humanitarian NGOs after initiated a nationwide program to remove all Afghan migrants without proper legal documentation from their borders, relocating them back to Afghanistan. 

Nearly 1 million migrants have been deported in the past month alone according to estimates by Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni.  That’s around half of the 2 million Afghans currently residing in the country.  Iran’s government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani stated at the beginning of the relocation effort:

“We’ve always striven to be good hosts, but national security is a priority.” 

The deportations are a response to detrimental intelligence leaks and acts of sabotage within Iran during recent conflict with Israel.  Iranian authorities report the capture of a number of Afghan refugees involved in the transportation and piloting of drones, the gathering of sensitive intelligence and the planting of bombs.  They assert that migrants are easier for the Israelis to bribe.

In a well-publicized case, Iranian authorities in the city of Rey arrested an Afghan university student accusing him of links to the Mossad and alleging he was caught in possession of sensitive material on bomb-making, drone mechanics and surveillance operations. 

State television aired reports of arrested Afghan citizens “confessing” to being Israeli agents.  In one such report, broadcast on June 26, showed the questioning of several suspects, mostly Afghans, being accused of plotting to bomb a power station in southeast Tehran.

It is possible that the mass deportations represent nothing more than an effort to divert blame for Iranian intelligence failures onto a convenient scapegoat.  However, migrant groups have historically been easy targets for manipulation and conversion by foreign enemies and Iran’s caution is a logical response.  Open borders have long been used by intelligence agencies as a means to plant “sleeper agents” within nations they plan to go to war with.

For example, several Iranians have been recently apprehended trying to sneak across the US border, some of them with national security ties.  

The Taliban government has urged Iran to stop the exodus, calling for a gradual process instead.  Taliban officials say the dignity of the migrants must be respected, though, it is likely that the Afghan economy could be crippled by a surge of a million or more refugees in such a short span of time and the Taliban have limited means of humanitarian support.

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‘No doubt’ Netanyahu preventing hostage deal, charges ex-spokesman of Families Forum

On the morning of Saturday, October 7, Haim Rubinstein heard the sirens go off at his home in Tel Aviv. He turned the television on and saw Hamas terrorists getting off a white pickup truck in Sderot and then watched social media footage of Israelis being kidnapped to the Gaza Strip.

Rubinstein understood instantly that these events were unprecedented, and that immediate action was needed.

He saw the first hostages being dragged away on foot, in pickup trucks and on motorcycles — including Noa Argamani, who was kidnapped from the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im aboard a motorcycle while crying for help, with her boyfriend Avinatan Or led away on foot by terrorists.

Rubinstein, 35 — an experienced media adviser who had previously served as spokesman for former Yesh Atid MK Ofer Shelah and as a member of the party’s media team in four election campaigns — told his partner Roni: “I can no longer sit around.”

“The first thing I did was pick up the phone a few minutes after 8 a.m. and tell my clients that I had decided to take time off to help the hostages’ families,” Rubinstein told Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site, in an interview this week.

On the same day that Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people in Israel and took 253 people hostage into Gaza, Rubinstein and his partner began collecting names of hostages who were identified in news reports and on social media. By the end of that bloody Saturday, he had already gathered 70 names.

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End Game: Netanyahu Now Plans To Annex Gaza, Bowing To Extremist Members Of Coalition

Having rendered much of Gaza uninhabitable and displacing a huge proportion of its population, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to propose a plan by which Israel will begin claiming parts of Gaza to be Israeli territory, with an eye on eventually seizing all of it. The scheme — which is said to have President Trump’s backing though also certain to trigger international condemnation — is aimed at preventing his extremist ruling coalition from splintering, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which first reported on it.  

Under the scheme, Israel will give Gaza political and militant group Hamas a short deadline for accepting a ceasefire. After Hamas refuses to accept Netanyahu’s terms (which will likely be written to guarantee refusal) Israel will start annexing portions of Gaza, starting with the buffer zone it has created along the perimeter of the territory, before proceeding to claim more land in the north. Eventually, all of Gaza will be claimed as Israeli land, fulfilling the wishes of extremist ministers who are vital to Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. 

One of those powerful coalition members is Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism party, which seeks to move the Israeli state closer to a theocracy. Smotrich is himself a West Bank settler who has long agitated for the annexing of that territory. In May, Smotrich told a settler conference that “Gaza will be totally destroyed,” with all 2.3 million residents “concentrated” in the extreme south, where they will be “totally despairing” with “no hope” and “looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.” 

Smotrich opposed Netanyahu’s decision — in the face of rising malnutrition and starvation in Gaza accompanied by growing global condemnation — to even slightly increase the flow of food and medicine into the besieged strip. So did another minister of note: Itamar Ben Gvir, who leads the National Security Ministry, called Netanyahu’s move “a capitulation to Hamas’s deceitful campaign,” and reiterated his demand that nothing at all be allowed to flow into Gaza, and for the IDF to conquer the territory and encourage the Palestinians to move to other countries. To get a sense of his extremism, consider that Ben Gvir infamously adorned his home with a photo of Baruch Goldstein, who mass-murdered 28 Muslims in the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. 

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Israel’s aid concessions merely offer Gazans survival on a leash

Over the past few weeks, the images coming out of Gaza have become impossible to ignore, even for Israel’s staunchest allies. Emaciated children, newborns dying from dehydration, and reports of adults collapsing from hunger made headlines around the world. More than 100 prominent humanitarian organizations signed a joint statement urging “decisive action” to end the siege, while the UN’s World Food Programme warned that a third of Gazans are going several days without eating at all. Even celebrities who haven’t said a word about Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza for two years felt compelled to condemn its latest phase.

In turn, several Western governments that are usually reluctant to openly criticize Israel began to issue statements of concern, calling for an unimpeded flow of aid. Britain and France joined the chorus — the latter taking the additional step of announcing it will recognize a Palestinian state — and even U.S. President Donald Trump has now called out what he described as “real starvation” in Gaza, in a public rebuke of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This past weekend, in the face of growing international pressure, Israel announced several measures ostensibly aimed at allaying the humanitarian crisis it created: a daily 10-hour “tactical pause in military activity” within the 13 percent of Gaza that remains accessible to Palestinians; the opening of “secure routes” to allow more aid trucks to enter the Strip; and the resumption of aid drops from the sky.

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Netherlands Labels Israel ‘Threat To National Security’ In Unprecedented Move

The Netherlands has, for the first time, included Israel on a list of states which pose a threat to its national security, according to a report from the Dutch National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) – the country’s main counterterrorism agency. 

The report bears the title Assessment of Threats from State Actors. It notes that Israel has made efforts to manipulate and influence public opinion and policy in the Netherlands, via disinformation campaigns. 

According to the Dutch report, an Israeli ministry circulated a document to journalists and officials in the Netherlands last year, which included personal details of Dutch citizens. 

This took place after fans of the Israeli football team Maccabi Tel Aviv carried out provocative acts after their team lost a match in Amsterdam in November 2024, triggering tension and clashes with locals. 

The report by the Dutch agency also noted concerns over threats against the International Criminal Court at The Hague, from both Washington and Tel Aviv. It said these threats could negatively affect the court’s work. 

Israel has long posed a threat to the ICC. According to a report by The Guardian from May last year, Tel Aviv has waged a years-long intimidation campaign against the ICC, which included the “stalking” and “threatening” of its officials in a bid to stifle investigations into Israeli war crimes.

Since the court issued arrest warrants against Israel’s premier and former defense minister last year, Washington has imposed sanctions on the ICC. Israel and the US are not signatories of the 1998 Rome Statute nor members of the ICC. 

The American Servicemembers’ Protection Act of 2002, nicknamed the “Hague Invasion Act,” authorizes a US president to use “all means necessary and appropriate” to free any US or allied personnel detained by the ICC. This includes the potential use of military force. The law also restricts US cooperation with and support for the ICC.

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AOC wrong: More civilians die when we send Israel ‘defensive weapons’

On July 18, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) voted against the U.S. defense appropriations bill. She also voted against an amendment to the bill submitted by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) that would have cut $500 million from funds for Israel’s Iron Dome, the air defense system designed to shoot down short-range rockets.

AOC’s vote on both did not affect the outcome – MTG’s amendment failed, having received only 6 votes, while the defense spending bill passed, 221 to 209. Nonetheless, AOC’s opposition to MTG’s amendment provoked significant outcry among progressives, particularly when she defended her rejection of the amendment on X the following day:

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s amendment does nothing to cut off offensive aid to Israel nor end the flow of US munitions being used in Gaza… What it does do is cut off defensive Iron Dome capacities while allowing the actual bombs killing Palestinians to continue. I have long stated that I do not believe that adding to the death count of innocent victims to this war is constructive to its end… I remain focused on cutting the flow of US munitions that are being used to perpetuate the genocide in Gaza.

Many prominent human rights and Palestine advocates denounced her explanation in the replies, pointing out the incongruity between her charge that Israel is committing genocide and her determination to continue funding it. The virulent reaction generated its own round of media coverage, especially after her Bronx office was vandalized, and amplified the progressives’ disappointment with their rising star.

AOC’s post highlighted a flawed logic that many American politicians continue to deploy: the idea that it is both moral and possible to distinguish between defensive and offensive weapons. A similar logic was used by the Biden administration regarding support for Saudi Arabia during its bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen. In February 2021, President Joe Biden declared that he was “ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” Instead, Washington would only provide defensive munitions, ostensibly to help protect Saudi cities from Ansar Allah’s missiles.

In both cases, a Democratic politician depicted their actions as reflecting a responsible middle path, neither enabling aggressive behavior nor abandoning a U.S. strategic partner. They may think this helps them to appear reasonable and primarily concerned with the welfare of civilian victims of military conflict.

Yet by boosting Saudi Arabia and Israel’s ability to “defend” themselves, American politicians — from a centrist like Biden to an ostensible progressive like AOC — are enabling the aggressive behavior that they allegedly wish to curtail. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel are effectively encouraged to act more aggressively knowing they are protected, thanks to the United States, from costly retaliation.

Especially in the case of Israel, decades of virtually unconditional U.S. support have disincentivized any previous willingness on its part to compromise or seek peace. This is the moral hazard of Washington support whether in the form of a guaranteed supply of U.S. weaponry, or vetoes at the UN Security Council. Knowing that one will not face consequences for bad behavior tends to inspire more of it.

And yet this evident truism has not inspired a change in U.S. policy. For decades until at least the October 7 Hamas attack, successive administrations claimed that the only way to convince Israel to accept a two-state solution was to provide the weapons that would make it feel militarily invincible against any and all of its neighbors, otherwise as known as ensuring its “qualitative military edge,” or QME.

The Iron Dome, which was built with nearly $1.7 billion in U.S. funding and now depends on hundreds of millions of dollars more worth of key U.S.-provided parts to continue operating, offers an example. When it came online in 2011, one of the rationales for U.S. support was that it would actually help protect Palestinian lives as well as Israelis, ostensibly because, if fewer Israelis were killed by Palestinian rockets, Israel’s retaliation would be less severe.

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The Gaza Catastrophe

It was obvious almost from the get-go what Israel was up to in Gaza. I wrote the article below in early December of 2023. Gaza was to be ethnically cleansed of Palestinians, full stop. Whether by bullets, bombs, disease, mass starvation, or expulsion, Palestinians were to be eliminated from the land, replaced by Jewish settlers. A beach blanket bingo fantasy scene would follow.

Chris Hedges writes about this today, honestly and powerfully. Caitlin Johnstone puts it bluntly in her latest, the title of which is “They’re Starving Civilians To Steal A Palestinian Territory, And They’re Lying About It.” It’s all so shameful and disgusting.

Anyway, here’s what I wrote in 2023, when Israel got a blank check from Biden and Blinken. Now that blank check has become a mandate from the Trump administration, complete with fantasies of a “new” Gaza, depopulated of Palestinians, featuring a fantasy Trump tower. Can the U.S. government sink any lower? I suppose it can.

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The Genocidal Partnership of Israel and the United States

For decades, countless U.S. officials have proclaimed that the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable. Now, the ties that bind are laced with genocide. The two countries function as accomplices while methodical killing continues in Gaza, with both societies directly – and differently – making it all possible.

The policies of Israel’s government are aligned with the attitudes of most Jewish Israelis. In a recent survey, three-quarters of them (and 64 percent of all Israelis) said they largely agreed with the statement that “there are no innocent people in Gaza” – nearly half of whom are children.

“There is no more ‘permitted’ and ‘forbidden’ with regard to Israel’s evilness toward the Palestinians,” dissident columnist Gideon Levy wrote three months ago in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “It is permitted to kill dozens of captive detainees and to starve to death an entire people.” The biggest Israeli media outlets echo and amplify sociopathic voices. “Genocide talk has spread into all TV studios as legitimate talk. Former colonels, past members of the defense establishment, sit on panels and call for genocide without batting an eye.”

Last week, Levy provided an update: “The weapon of deliberate starvation is working. The Gaza ‘Humanitarian’ Foundation, in turn, has become a tragic success. Not only have hundreds of Gazans been shot to death while waiting in line for packages distributed by the GHF, but there are others who don’t manage to reach the distribution points, dying of hunger. Most of these are children and babies…. They lie on hospital floors, on bare beds, or carried on donkey carts. These are pictures from hell. In Israel, many people reject these photos, doubting their veracity. Others express their joy and pride on seeing starving babies.”

Unimpeded, a daily process continues to exterminate more and more of the 2.1 million Palestinian people who remain in Gaza – bombing and shooting civilians while blocking all but a pittance of the food and medicine needed to sustain life. After destroying Gaza’s hospitals, Israel is still targeting healthcare workers (killing at least 70 in May and June), as well as first responders and journalists.

The barbarism is in sync with the belief that “no innocent people” are in Gaza. A relevant observation came from Aldous Huxley in 1936, the same year that the swastika went onto Germany’s flag: “The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” Kristallnacht happened two years later.

Renowned genocide scholar Omer Bartov explained during an interview on Democracy Now! in mid-July that genocide is “the attempt to destroy not simply people in large numbers, but to destroy them as members of a group. The intent is to destroy the group itself. And it doesn’t mean that you have to kill everyone. It means that the group will be destroyed and that it will not be able to reconstitute itself as a group. And to my mind, this is precisely what Israel is trying to do.”

Bartov, who is Jewish and spent the first half of his life in Israel, said:

“What I see in the Israeli public is an extraordinary indifference by large parts of the public to what Israel is doing and what it’s done in the name of Israeli citizens in Gaza. In part, it has to do with the fact that the Israeli media has decided not to report on the horrors that the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is perpetrating in Gaza. You simply will not see it on Israeli television. If some pictures happen to come in, they are presented only as material that might be used by foreign propaganda against Israel. Now, Israeli citizens can, of course, use other media resources. We can all do that. But most of them prefer not to. And I would say that while about 30 percent of the population in Israel is completely in favor of what is happening, and, in fact, is egging the government and the army on, I think the vast majority of the population simply does not want to know about it.”

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Israel ‘freezes’ plans for concentration camp in southern Gaza: Report

Israel’s so-called “Humanitarian City” project, which was planned to be established on the ruins of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, has been frozen, Israeli media reported on 28 July.

“There is no decision to proceed with this, and there is no alternative plan. The political echelon was certain it was heading toward a hostage deal that included withdrawals in the southern Gaza Strip, so it seems they’ve abandoned this initiative – it’s on hold for now,” a senior security source told Yedioth Ahronoth.

The project, described as a concentration camp in Palestinian and Israeli media, was intended to forcibly displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to an isolated area near the Egyptian border. Gathering Palestinians there is seen as a first step to ethnically cleansing Gaza and forcing millions of Palestinians to flee to foreign countries as refugees.

Rather than fight Hamas, Israeli forces in Gaza are exerting most of their effort and resources to demolishing homes, residential buildings, and infrastructure to ensure displaced Palestinians have nowhere to return to.

The “Humanitarian City” project aimed to initially force some 600,000 Palestinians into an area between the Philadelphi and Morag axes on the ruins of Rafah.

Military reports estimated that its completion would take at least a year, which angered the Israeli cabinet.

The decision comes as Israel continues to severely restrict aid reaching Gaza, causing starvation and famine in the strip to worsen as a result.

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