Tag: palestine

Top Defense Official: US Can Handle Middle East, Russia & China Operations All At Once

It might be difficult for most any American, especially in the younger generation, to remember a time when America was not deeply involved in a raging foreign conflict – whether directly or via proxies. At this very moment the US is shipping heavy weapons and sinking billions in aid into to no less than two major wars which have the potential to erupt into broader regional or even world conflagrations involving clashing large powers: namely, the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Gaza conflicts.

While much of the public might rightly think the United States has once again overextended itself, one top defense official has shrugged it off and essentially said… no problem. At an Atlantic Council event held days ago Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady said that the Pentagon stands ready to handle missions connected to three potential proxy wars in defense if its interests if it comes to that.

Grady described that the US Navy in particular is capable of waging battle against Russia in Ukraine, against China in Taiwan, and is ready to assist the Israelis in Gaza if called upon. This could be done simultaneously, he described, while admitting this would stretch naval forces thin.

Adm. Grady explained, “You look at what is required to support Ukraine, look at what might be required to support our partner in Israel, and then, of course, you put Taiwan on top of that—we have the construct that we do with combatant commanders and the rest that should allow us to command and control those three things all at one time.”

He stressed, “It’s part of our campaigning process, which is central to the national defense strategy. Is it challenging? Sure.” During the remarks he spoke of various emerging global hotspots as “test cases” and suggested that the so-called rules-based order would collapse if the US didn’t rise to the challenge.

On China in particular, and the potential for future clash over Taiwan independence, he said as follows:

Grady said increased Chinese activity near the shoal was “a case where the probability of buffoonery goes way high as you start to see the Chinese PRC, PLA and, more importantly, not PLA and but kind of white and white vessels like Coast Guard equivalents,” participating in activities meant to coerce U.S. allies in the region like the Philippines and Taiwan. 

More disturbingly, he said, “The tempo is a little bit higher right now. This Isn’t a test case for what we would do; I think it’s a test case for the whole rules-based international order, frankly.”

This appeared an attempt to justify and rally behind Biden’s pushing Congress to pass a $106 billion funding package to further arm Ukraine, Israel, as well as support operations in the Asia-Pacific.

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Civilians make up 61% of Gaza deaths from airstrikes, Israeli study finds

The aerial bombing campaign by Israel in Gaza is the most indiscriminate in terms of civilian casualties in recent years, a study published by an Israeli newspaper has found.

The analysis in Haaretz came as Israeli forces fought to consolidate their control of northern Gaza on Saturday, bombing the Shejaiya district of Gaza City, while also conducting airstrikes on Rafah, a town on the southern border with Egypt where the Israeli army has told people in Gaza to take shelter.

The full death toll from the past 24 hours was unclear but the main hospital in central Gaza, at Deir al-Balah, reported it received 71 bodies, and 62 bodies were taken to Nasser hospital in the main southern city of Khan Younis, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Haaretz published an analysis by Yagil Levy, a sociology professor at the Open University of Israel, which found that in three earlier campaigns in Gaza, in the period from 2012-22, the ratio of civilian deaths to the total of those killed in airstrikes hovered at about 40%. That ratio declined to 33% in a bombing campaign earlier this year, called Operation Shield and Arrow.

In the first three weeks of the current operation, Swords of Iron, the civilian proportion of total deaths rose to 61%, in what Levy described as “unprecedented killing” for Israeli forces in Gaza. The ratio is significantly higher than the average civilian toll in all the conflicts around the world during the 20th century, in which civilians accounted for about half the dead, according to Levy.

“The broad conclusion is that extensive killing of civilians not only contributes nothing to Israel’s security, but that it also contains the foundations for further undermining it,” Levy concluded. “The Gazans who will emerge from the ruins of their homes and the loss of their families will seek revenge that no security arrangements will be able to withstand.”

The study confirms an investigation 10 days ago by the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, which found Israel was deliberately targeting residential blocks to cause mass civilian casualties in the hope people would turn on their Hamas rulers. The figures will make uneasy reading for the Biden administration, which is facing global criticism and isolation for vetoing a UN security council vote for a ceasefire on Friday.

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NYC couple checks out 5 pro-Palestinian children’s books indefinitely to prevent ‘indoctrination

A Roosevelt Island couple have taken a novel approach to what they say is anti-Israel propaganda in their local library — they’ve checked out five pro-Palestinian children’s books and will keep them indefinitely to prevent them from being used for “indoctrination.”

The books — for children as young as 3 — were prominently on display at the New York Public Library branch during “Read Palestine Week,” with several titles about Palestinians arranged in a “indigenous people’s” display with books about Native Americans.

“It’s pretty easy to understand what they’re doing. They are trying to connect between these two identities, and make Israel and Jews look as if we are colonizers and not indigenous to our land,” said Asaf Eyal, whose wife checked out the books on Dec. 3.

“Placing these books next to the Native American books is a very obvious move. The library manager created this display very purposely,” Eyal, 47, added.

Among the showcased books were “We’re in This Together,” a title by anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour — which offered her view of the situation.

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FACEBOOK APPROVED AN ISRAELI AD CALLING FOR ASSASSINATION OF PRO-PALESTINE ACTIVIST

A SERIES OF advertisements dehumanizing and calling for violence against Palestinians, intended to test Facebook’s content moderation standards, were all approved by the social network, according to materials shared with The Intercept.

The submitted ads, in both Hebrew and Arabic, included flagrant violations of policies for Facebook and its parent company Meta. Some contained violent content directly calling for the murder of Palestinian civilians, like ads demanding a “holocaust for the Palestinians” and to wipe out “Gazan women and children and the elderly.” Other posts, like those describing kids from Gaza as “future terrorists” and a reference to “Arab pigs,” contained dehumanizing language.

“The approval of these ads is just the latest in a series of Meta’s failures towards the Palestinian people,” Nadim Nashif, founder of the Palestinian social media research and advocacy group 7amleh, which submitted the test ads, told The Intercept. “Throughout this crisis, we have seen a continued pattern of Meta’s clear bias and discrimination against Palestinians.”

7amleh’s idea to test Facebook’s machine-learning censorship apparatus arose last month, when Nashif discovered an ad on his Facebook feed explicitly calling for the assassination of American activist Paul Larudee, a co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement. Facebook’s automatic translation of the text ad read: “It’s time to assassinate Paul Larudi [sic], the anti-Semitic and ‘human rights’ terrorist from the United States.” Nashif reported the ad to Facebook, and it was taken down.

The ad had been placed by Ad Kan, a right-wing Israeli group founded by former Israel Defense Force and intelligence officers to combat “anti-Israeli organizations” whose funding comes from purportedly antisemitic sources, according to its website. (Neither Larudee nor Ad Kan immediately responded to requests for comment.)

Calling for the assassination of a political activist is a violation of Facebook’s advertising rules. That the post sponsored by Ad Kan appeared on the platform indicates Facebook approved it despite those rules. The ad likely passed through filtering by Facebook’s automated process, based on machine-learning, that allows its global advertising business to operate at a rapid clip.

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The Grim Reality of Israel’s Corpse Politics

After Israeli forces shot and killed thirty-nine-year-old Fadi Samara in May of 2020, his mourning family dug him a grave in his village of Abu Qash, located in the occupied West Bank district of Ramallah.

But nearly four years later, his grave remains empty.

“I take the children to their father’s grave a few times a month even though we still have not received his body,” says Saja Muhammad, Samara’s thirty-one-year-old widow and mother to his five children, ages nine to three.

“It gives the children some comfort,” she continues, sitting on the couch at her family’s home in the city of Biddya in the northern Salfit district, where she returned following Samara’s killing. “We live with the hope that one day his body will be returned to us. And when that day comes his grave is ready to receive him.”

Samara’s body is one of hundreds currently held by Israel, part of a decades-long policy that researchers and rights groups describe as an attempt to control and punish Palestinian families by withholding the corpses of their slain loved ones. Some are buried in nameless graves and others are frozen in refrigerators.

Israeli officials claim this controversial practice is necessary to avoid incitement during funerals of Palestinians killed by Israelis. Israel also withholds the remains of slain Palestinians who are suspected of having carried out attacks against Israelis, using their corpses as bargaining chips for future negotiations with Palestinian leaders.

However, Palestinians, some of whom have waited for months, years, and in some cases decades for the return of their slain loved ones’ bodies, argue that this policy aims to punish them, condemning their lives to perpetual mourning.

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Israel knew Hamas’ attack plan more than a year ago

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’ battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened Oct. 7.

The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.

The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’ capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.

Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said Hamas’ intentions were unclear.

“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by the Times.

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Israeli AI “Assassination Factory” Plays Central Role in the Gaza War

Tel Aviv has been relying on an AI Program dubbed the Gospel to select targets in Gaza at a rapid pace. In past operations in Gaza, the IDF ran out of targets to strike in the besieged enclave.

A statement on the IDF website says the Israeli military is using the Gospel to “produce targets at a fast pace.” It continues, “Through the rapid and automatic extraction of intelligence,” the Gospel produced targeting recommendations for its researchers “with the goal of a complete match between the recommendation of the machine and the identification carried out by a person.”

Aviv Kochavi, former head of the IDF, said the system was first used in the May 2021 bombing campaign in Gaza.  “To put that into perspective, in the past we would produce 50 targets in Gaza per year,” he said. “Now, this machine produces 100 targets a single day, with 50% of them being attacked.”

The IDF does not disclose what it inputs into the Gospel for the program to produce a list of targets.

Thursday, the Israeli outlet +972 Magazine reported Tel Aviv was using AI to pick targets in Gaza. A former Israeli official told the +972 that the Gospel was being used as a “mass assassination factory.” The program is selecting the home of suspected low-level Hamas members for destruction. Sources told the outlet that strikes on homes can kill numerous civilians.

One source was critical of the Gospel. “I remember thinking that it was like if [Palestinian militants] would bomb all the private residences of our families when [Israeli soldiers] go back to sleep at home on the weekend,” they said.

On Friday, the Guardian expanded on the +972 article by reporting that the Gospel plays a central role in the Gaza military operations.

A former senior Israeli military source told the Guardian that operatives use a “very accurate” calculation of the number or rate of civilians fleeing a building before an impending strike. However, other experts disputed that assertion. A lawyer who advises governments on AI and compliance with humanitarian law told the outlet there was “little empirical evidence” to support the claim.

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Press Relayed Israeli Claims of Secret Hospital Base With Insufficient Skepticism

A cover image of the New York Post (11/16/23) depicted a supposedly shocking find. The headline “Guns Behind the MRI Machine” accompanied a photo of what Israeli troops had allegedly uncovered: Hamas guns at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

On the Post cover were fewer than a dozen AK-47s and matching magazines, as well as a few tactical vests. In its subhead, the Post called this “proof Hamas used hospital as  military base in stunning war crime.”

Many other media outlets reported Israel’s claims—and accompanying photos and videos the IDF offered as evidence—with little pushback other than Hamas’s denials and an acknowledgment that the outlet could not independently verify the claims. “IDF ‘Found Clear Evidence’ of Hamas Operation out of Al-Shifa Hospital, Says Spokesperson,” was an NBC News headline (11/15/23); Fox News (11/15/23) had “Watch: Israel Finds Weapons, Military Equipment Used by Hamas in Key Gaza Hospital After Raid, IDF Says.”

Israel’s assault on Al Shifa hospital provoked widespread international outrage, so a great deal hinged on its claim that the hospital was being used as a military base. But there are many reasons to question this display of weaponry, questions that imply that not only did the Israeli military make a weak case, but that some media outlets and pundits were too quick to take this presentation at face value.

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IDF Is Ignoring Warnings About Impending Massacre in Judea, Samaria, Say Sources

‘Planning same thing here, hoarding weapons, training’

Fatah Central Committee Secretary-General and PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports head Jibril Rajoub Tuesday said the October 7 attack “didn’t come from nowhere” and was “part of the Palestinians’ defensive war” against “the continued crimes of the occupation in Gaza.”

In an interview with Egyptian MBC TV, Rajoub said “the next, more severe violence will come from the West Bank. What is happening in the West Bank, which includes 700,000 Israeli settlers, is a similar situation and is connected to all aspects of life, holy sites and even olive trees, our schools, mosques and churches. Therefore, the next conflagration will be more violent in the West Bank.”

Meanwhile, Israeli security in Judea and Samaria has been specifically designed in a way that will be vulnerable to a certain type of key that is not immediately perceptible to residents encountering them. Thus, the gates and armaments of Judea and Samaria (and in general the entire security apparatus) have been designed, selected, and controlled universally to be uniquely vulnerable to a specific tool that has been then semi-secretly given to the PA – armored vehicles.

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Israeli Minister in Charge of West Bank Says Territory Is Home to ‘2 Million Nazis’

Bezalel Smotrich, the extremist Israeli finance minister who’s been given sweeping powers over the West Bank, has said the occupied territory is home to “2 million Nazis,” referring to part of the Palestinian population.

It’s estimated that around 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. The Times of Israel reported that Smotrich made the comments in an apparent reference to two polls that found two-thirds of West Bank Palestinians supported the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel. However, the polls that were referenced surveyed Palestinians living in both Gaza and the West Bank.

The polls also came after weeks of Israel’s brutal bombing campaign and ground incursion into Gaza, as well as a significant uptick in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Based on polling, Hamas did not have much support before October 7 and the Israeli bombardment that ensued. A poll conducted on October 6 found that 67% of Palestinians in Gaza either had “no trust at all” (44 percent) or “not a lot of trust” (23 percent) in Hamas. The same poll found that 73% of Gazans favored a peaceful solution to the conflict with Israel.

Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionism Party, also referenced “Nazis” in the West Bank in comments on X in response to a Fatah official saying the October 7 Hamas attack didn’t happen in a vacuum. “A reminder to those who have not yet sobered up and think that the Nazis in Judea and Samaria are different from the Nazis in Gaza,” Smotrich said, according to Middle East Eye.

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