Tag: palestine

Israel massacres dozens in Gaza after Biden announces ceasefire

In a video statement Wednesday afternoon, US President Joe Biden announced that a ceasefire agreement had been reached between Hamas and Israel and would be implemented on Sunday. “A ceasefire and a hostage deal have been reached between Israel and Hamas,” Biden said.

Biden claimed that the first phase of the agreement would include the “withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza and the release of a number of hostages held by Hamas.”

Israel reacted to Biden’s announcement by continuing to massacre dozens of people in Gaza. More than 30 people were killed in bombings on refugee camps, residential neighborhoods and hospitals Wednesday following the announcement, on top of 50 that had been killed earlier in the day.

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said following Biden’s announcement, “An official statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be issued only after the completion of the final details of the agreement, which are being worked on at present.”

It subsequently said in a statement, “The Israeli negotiations team in Doha reported to Netanyahu of a last-minute attempt by Hamas to withdraw from a clause in the agreement,” adding, “Netanyahu instructed the negotiations team to uphold the understandings that were agreed upon and to reject the last-minute blackmail attempts by Hamas.”

Regardless of whether an agreement is finally reached and whether Israeli troops formally withdraw from Gaza, any “ceasefire” would continue the illegal Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the brutal apartheid regime to which the Palestinians are subjected.

Notably, the Israeli “ceasefire” with Lebanon worked out in November has been followed by almost daily bombardment of Lebanese territory by Israel, and there is every reason to believe this would be the case for Gaza as well.

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Stealing Credit for the Gaza Ceasefire

Shortly after the ceasefire in Gaza was announced on Wednesday, President Joe Biden issued a statement taking credit for the deal, never mentioning who is really responsible for it.  Biden said: 

“I laid out the precise contours of this plan on May 31, 2024, after which it was endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council. It is the result not only of the extreme pressure that Hamas has been under and the changed regional equation after a ceasefire in Lebanon and weakening of Iran — but also of dogged and painstaking American diplomacy. My diplomacy never ceased in their efforts to get this done.”

In an eight-minute address Wednesday night from the White House, Biden again never mentioned Trump, giving all the credit to himself and his team.  When a reporter asked him who the history books would credit, Biden replied, “Is that a joke?”

“This plan was developed and negotiated by my team and will be largely implemented by the incoming administration. That’s why I told my team to keep the incoming administration fully informed,” Biden said.

Actually, it wasn’t Biden’s ceasefire plan at all, according to Israel journalist Ben Caspit:

“In fact, the deal being finalized now could have been achieved last May, and was actually formulated by Netanyahu. It was Biden who unveiled Netanyahu’s plan at the time. … ‘Trump forced Netanyahu to finally accept Netanyahu’s plan,’ an Israeli diplomatic source familiar with the events told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.”

Biden at no time seriously sought any ceasefire. Instead he unceasingly facilitated Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in a 15-month crime spree, punctuated by pro forma attempts at “ceasefires,” which Biden allowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sabotage every time. 

Biden’s “attempts” at “ceasefires” were actually electoral stunts to try to con voters, who were opposed to his genocidal policy, into thinking he was really concerned about thousands of innocent lives being systematically snuffed out with American bombs.

He was also trying to make Americans believe he was earnestly attempting to stop the daily massacres. But a majority of voters knew all along that he, and his replacement Kamala Harris, had no intentions whatsoever of forcing a ceasefire.

Biden had all the leverage over Netanyahu. But instead of using it to force him to accept a hostage exchange at anytime over 15 months to stop the killing, he instead pushed the lie that Israel was merely defending itself. 

This war was never about the hostages, defeating Hamas or defending Israel. It was about ethnically cleansing Gaza in a genocide to further the 1948 project to establish Greater Israel on all of historic Palestine, and the Biden administration was on board with it. 

If Biden had really wanted a ceasefire, like the one he’s now trying to take credit for, all he had to do was telephone Netanyahu and tell him no more guns, no more ammo, no more diplomatic cover and Israel would have been forced to cease its fire.

But Biden never did that.

In his dwindling days in office he fraudulently wants to be remembered as a peacemaker and a statesman, just like he waited until the very end in another stunt to take Cuba off the terrorism list but never restored relations with Havana the way Barack Obama did. 

That Trump is the one instead who forced Israel to accept this ceasefire is beyond doubt, based on credible sources. 

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Arab Officials Say Trump’s Team Did More for Hostage Deal in a Single Meeting Than Biden Admin Did in a Year

An official appointed by President-elect Donald Trump for his next administration was the deciding factor in securing a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, but President Joe Biden nevertheless took a victory lap over the breakthrough on Tuesday.

Steve Witkoff, who Trump appointed as his Middle East envoy for his second administration, emerged successful from a critical meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, according to The Times of Israel.

Witkoff apparently did more to move Netanyahu toward a ceasefire in a single meeting than Biden did in the past year, according to two Arab officials who spoke with the outlet, which is based in Jerusalem.

Witkoff, a real estate attorney and investor, was in Doha, Qatar, last week to take part in the talks, capping the trip with the stop in Jerusalem to meet with Netanyahu.

Two days later, negotiators from Israel and Hamas confirmed that they accepted the ceasefire agreement in principle.

“A deal could have been reached much earlier, but both sides led to talks falling apart at various times,” one Arab official told the Times.

But the Biden administration was swift to take credit for the ceasefire, overlooking the fact that the approaching Trump administration seems to have been the catalyst for the deal.

Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement from the White House that the ceasefire was reached “thanks to the leadership of President Joe Biden.”

“President Biden and I have no higher priority than the safety of Americans, and are determined that all the American hostages be returned home as part of this deal,” she insisted.

Harris also appeared to pat herself on the back for the deal.

“In my many conversations with leaders in the region, my unwavering focus has been to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination,” Harris said.

“I will never stop working to achieve a future of greater peace, dignity, and security for all people in the region,” she continued.

The play here from Biden and Harris is rather obvious.

Biden is concluding a dismal four years in the Oval Office.

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Israel Destroyed Gaza ‘for Generations to Come’ and the World Stayed Silent

The first official reference to Gaza becoming increasingly uninhabitable was made by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 2012, when the population of the Gaza Strip was estimated at 1.8 million inhabitants.

The intention of the report, “The Gaza Strip: The Economic Situation and the Prospects for Development,” was not merely to prophesize, but to warn that if the world continued to stand idle in the face of the ongoing blockade on Gaza, a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent.

Yet, little was done, though the UN continued with its countdown, increasing the frequency and urgency of its warnings, especially following major wars.

Another report in 2015 from UNCTAD stated that the Gaza crisis had intensified following the most destructive war to that date, the year before. The war had destroyed hundreds of factories, thousands of homes, and displaced tens of thousands of people.

By 2020, though, based on the criteria set by the UN, Gaza should have become ‘uninhabitable.’ Yet, little was done to remedy the crisis. The population grew rapidly, while resources, including Gaza’s land mass, shrank due to the ever-expanding Israeli ‘buffer zone’. The prospects for the “world’s largest open-air prison” became even dimmer.

Yet, the international community did little to heed the call of UNCTAD and other UN and international institutions. The humanitarian crisis—situated within a prolonged political crisis, a siege, repeated wars, and daily violence—worsened, reaching, on October 7, 2023, the point of implosion.

One wonders if the world had paid even the slightest attention to Gaza and the cries of people trapped behind walls, barbed wire, and electric fences, whether the current war and genocide could have been avoided.

It is all moot now. The worst-case scenario has actualized in a way that even the most pessimistic estimates by Palestinian, Arab, or international groups could not have foreseen.

Not only is Gaza now beyond “uninhabitable”, but, according to Greenpeace, it will be “uninhabitable for generations to come”. This does not hinge on the resilience of Palestinians in Gaza, whose legendary steadfastness is hardly disputed. However, there are essential survival needs that even the strongest people cannot replace with their mere desire to survive.

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Israel Bombs, America Yawns and Gatekeepers Con

As gatekeepers of the corporate information bazaar, you have served Israel well.  Echoing the propaganda of Tel Aviv and Washington has become mainstream fare, with omission at the heart of the campaign.  

Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president, judiciously wrote in 1789: “Whenever the people are well informed, they may be trusted with their own government.”  Unfortunately, today’s media mind managers have forgotten that.  The public’s right to know the truth about Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians, supported by the United States, has been subordinated to currying the favor of special interest groups and monied interests.   

You have been tranquilized by your intimate relationship to the national security state, ever willing to espouse the pro-Israel views of the White House, State Department, the Pentagon, and most, if not all, members of the American political class.

British novelist, George Orwell, in a passage from his prophetic novel, 1984, aptly described the relationship that has evolved between the establishment media and Israel; he wrote:  “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”  

There is a tendency among journalists to believe in their individual autonomy, although most work in large, hierarchical, corporate media organizations.  Many have convinced themselves that they are engaged in watchdog journalism, when they are, in fact, acting as stenographers for the powerful.  

In the case of Israel, journalists quickly learn compliancy, what can and cannot be said to protect careers.  While pro-Israel reporting and editorializing are rewarded, exact narratives and historical perspectives suffer repercussions.   

Censors have become unnecessary because an ideological self-censorship has formed and congealed.  Many of them can recall instances when they were told not to antagonize powerful interests and advertisers, and can name principled  journalists, like the late Helen Thomas and John Pilger, who were banished for saying the “unacceptable.” 

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The IDF Will Plan For Total Defeat Of Hamas In Gaza If Hostages are Not Released By Trump Inauguration

Israel’s Defense Minister Yisrael Katz instructed the IDF to bring him a plan for the complete defeat of Hamas in Gaza as soon as possible:

“I have instructed the IDF to present me with a plan for the total obliteration of Hamas in Gaza, should they fail to release the hostages by the time President Trump assumes office.”

The Defense Minister emphasized that it is unacceptable to be dragged into a war of attrition against Hamas in Gaza, while the hostages remain in the tunnels, putting their lives at risk and suffering severely.

Katz asked the IDF to indicate what points might make it difficult to implement the plan, including humanitarian issues and other issues, and to leave it to the political echelon to make the necessary decisions.

On another note, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump declared there will be ‘Hell to pay’ if the hostages are not released by the time he assumes office in 10 days.

What does that mean? U.S. involvement in the conflict?

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Genocide: The New Normal

Joe Biden’s parting gift of $8 billion in weapons sales to the apartheid state of Israel acknowledges the gruesome reality of the genocide in Gaza. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is a permanent, endless war designed not to destroy Hamas, or free Israeli hostages, but to eradicate, once and for all, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It is the final push to create a Greater Israel, which will include not only Gaza and the West Bank, but chunks of Lebanon and Syria. It is the culmination of the Zionist dream. And it will be paid for with rivers of blood — Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian.

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security of Israel Avi Dichter was probably offering conservative estimates when he said “I think that we are going to stay in Gaza for a long time. I think most people understand that [Israel] will be years in some kind of West Bank situation where you go in and out and maybe you remain along Netzarim [corridor].”

Mass extermination takes time. It is also expensive. Fortunately for Israel, its lobby in the U.S. has a stranglehold on Congress, our electoral process and the media narrative. Americans, although 61 percent support ending weapons shipments to Israel, will pay for it. And those that express dissent will be frog-marched into Zionist black holes where their voices are silenced and their careers jeopardized or destroyed. Donald Trump and the Republicans have an open disdain for democracy, but so do the Democrats and Joe Biden.

The U.S. provided $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel from October 2023 to October 2024, a substantial increase from the already $3.8 billion in military aid the U.S. gives Israel annually. This is a record for a single year. The State Department has informed Congress that it intends to approve another $8 billion in purchases of U.S.-made arms by Israel. This will provide Israel with more GPS guidance systems for bombs, more artillery shells, more missiles for fighter jets and helicopters, and more bombs, including 2,800 unguided MK-84 bombs, which Israel has a habit of dropping on densely packed tent encampments in Gaza. The pressure wave from the 2,000-pound MK-84 pulverizes buildings and exterminates life within a 400-yard radius. The blast, which ruptures lungs, rips apart limbs and bursts sinus cavities up to hundreds of yards away, leaves behind a 50-foot-wide and 36-foot-deep crater. Israel appears to have used this bomb to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, in Beirut on September 27, 2024.

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Leaked emails expose ‘collaborative efforts’ between Israeli govt and Center for Countering Digital Hate

Emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal how leading “anti-hate” campaigner Imran Ahmed collaborated with Israeli embassy officials to censor pro-Palestine social media accounts — and courted them for donations to his censorship-obsessed Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Since emerging in America from seemingly out of the blue in 2020, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has become one of the trans-Atlantic establishment’s most effective tools for censoring online speech. Its founder, Imran Ahmed, has nurtured close ties with the Biden White House since moving to Washington DC, targeting its political enemies with calls for their removal from social media. Back in his hometown of London, Ahmed was an influential advisor to the neoliberal wing of UK Labour, helping sabotage the leftist insurgency of Jeremy Corbyn and place his ally, Keir Starmer, in charge of the party. 

Ahmed has been embroiled in controversy since journalists Paul D. Thacker and Matt Taibbi published internal CCDH documents showing he held private meetings with influential Democratic lawmakers throughout 2024 to advance a plan to “kill Elon Musk’s Twitter.” The billionaire Twitter/X owner and his allies in president-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle retaliated by accusing the British operative of violating laws against foreign interference in American politics.

Ahmed, for his part, has dismissed the charge that he colludes with foreign governments as a kooky conspiracy. “The Center for Countering Digital Hate researches conspiracy theories. We don’t engage with them,” he said.

However, internal CCDH emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal that while Ahmed nurtures ties to the Labour government in Britain, the self-styled “anti-hate” campaigner also enjoys a secret, “collaborative” relationship with a rogue foreign government whose leadership currently stands accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice, and is wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

Provided by a CCDH insider who requested to remain anonymous out of fear that Ahmed and his allies would retaliate against him, the emails reveal that top officials in the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC helped introduce Ahmed to potential funders, and were even invited to review a CCDH report before its publication. The report urged Meta to remove pro-Palestine Facebook groups on the grounds that they promoted “anti-Jewish hate.” 

Ahmed seemed agitated when The Grayzone reached him by phone and asked him to confirm his email exchanges with the Israeli officials. “I have no idea which emails you’re talking about,” he stated. “You’ll have to send them through to us and have a look at them and come back to you.”

When asked if he had collaborated with the Israeli government, Ahmed did not deny the relationship. “We work with all governments,” he claimed. 

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Genocidal President, Genocidal Politics

When news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense.” Following the reports last month from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency.

It’s logical to focus on Biden as an individual. His choices to keep sending huge quantities of weaponry to Israel have been pivotal and calamitous. But the presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.

Forty days after the Gaza war began, Anne Boyer announced her resignation as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine. More than a year later, her statement illuminates why the moral credibility of so many liberal institutions has collapsed in the wake of Gaza’s destruction.

While Boyer denounced “the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza,” she emphatically chose to disassociate herself from the nation’s leading liberal news organization: “I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.”

The acclimatizing process soon became routine. It was most crucially abetted by President Biden and his loyalists, who were especially motivated to pretend that he wasn’t really doing what he was really doing.

For mainline journalists, the process required the willing suspension of belief in a consistent standard of language and humanity. When Boyer acutely grasped the dire significance of its Gaza coverage, she withdrew from “the newspaper of record.”

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Israel still can’t find any 7 October rape victims, prosecutor admits

There are still zero complainants in alleged cases of rapes committed by Palestinians on 7 October 2023, an Israeli prosecutor has admitted.

But Moran Gez, who handled cases against Palestinians swept up after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, is still calling for mass executions even without any substantial evidence against them.

“Anyone who entered Israel from Gaza on 7 October to kill or to loot, it doesn’t matter, should be included in the indictment and, as far as I’m concerned, receive the death penalty,” Gez said.

She said she made this case to colleagues involved in planning prosecutions related to the 7 October events.

“Why? Because of those who didn’t murder but looted, burned, stole, picked avocados, as some claim, because of this mess, the Israeli army forces were unable to arrive in time,” Gez added. “You came to the door with a drill and opened it to loot? Then a terrorist came in and murdered civilians there.”

Until recently the prosecutor in charge of so-called security cases in Israel’s southern district, Gez played a key role in the effort to put Palestinians responsible for what Israel considers criminal acts on 7 October on trial.

No trials have yet taken place.

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