Tag: palestine

Israeli tank gunner reveals orders to fire indiscriminately into kibbutz 

Firsthand testimony by admittedly inexperienced Israeli tank operators reveals orders to open fire upon Israeli communities when Palestinian militants breached the fences encircling Gaza on October 7.

A glowing profile of an all-female tank company by Israel’s N12 News network contains admissions by the 20-year-old captain — identified only as ‘Karni’ — that she was ordered by a “panicked” soldier to open fire on homes in the Holit kibbutz whether they contained civilians or not. 

Ten Israelis were killed in Holit on October 7; no children were among the dead.

“The soldier points and tells me, “shoot there — the terrorists are there,”” the captain recounts in the newly-released footage, noting that when she asked “are there civilians there?,” her compatriot simply replied, “I don’t know,” and ordered her to “just shoot” a tank round into the buildings anyway.

Ultimately, she recalled, “I decided not to shoot” as “this is an Israeli community.” Instead, she said, “I fired with my machine gun at a house.”

While the Israeli government and its army of international propagandists have blamed Hamas alone for a range of grisly killings on October 7, along with unsubstantiated claims of rape, torture and beheading babies, the comments in N12’s report add to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that shelling by Israeli tanks was responsible for many of the casualties incurred in Israeli kibbutzim. According to the soldiers interviewed, others killed by the tank company in question include supposed Palestinian militants whom they say they crushed to death with their vehicle.

“My driver spots two terrorists on the road and reports it,” the captain tells her N12 interviewer. When “I tell her to run them over, she simply runs over the terrorists and moves on,” she explains blithely.

The female tank company appears to have been trained on the least advanced vehicles in Israel’s arsenal, and given only border defense duties. In the chaos of the Hamas assault on October 7, they were forced into more advanced vehicles equipped with a remote controlled weapons system (RCWS).

In the N12 report, Brigadier General Raviv Mahmia admitted that taking on a band of militants in Kibbutz Holit was a “very complex” task for which the young tankers were “in many ways…not trained to fight.”

“They fired in Israeli communities, driving on plain roads,” he noted.

Reporting by The Grayzone has revealed that many of the bodies found burned beyond recognition inside southern Israel’s so-called Gaza envelope were likely victims of the Israeli military – which recent admissions seem to confirm. 

Keep reading

BBC Editor Speaks Out After False Gaza Hospital Reporting, Says He ‘Doesn’t Regret One Thing’

BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen was pressed on his initial reporting of an explosion at a hospital in Gaza on Saturday and said he didn’t regret his mistakes during an interview on the network on Saturday.

Several media outlets initially reported that Israel was responsibile for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. Bowen claimed during his initial reports that the Al-Ahli hospital was flattened.

“The missile hit the hospital not long after dark. You can hear the impact. The explosion destroyed Al-Ahli Hospital. It was already damaged from a smaller attack at the weekend. The building was flattened,” Bowen said.

Bowen, during an appearance on BBC News channel’s “Behind The Stories,” said he didn’t regret his reporting and that he “didn’t race to judgment.”

“So it broke in, I suppose, mid-evening. And to answer your question, no, I don’t regret one thing in my reporting, because I think I was measured throughout. I didn’t race to judgment,” he said.

Keep reading

Israeli ‘Iron Beam’ Lasers Are ‘Future Of Warfare’

Last year we reported on Israel’s development of a ground-based laser defense system dubbed ‘Iron Beam,’ which then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called “a game-changer” that could “bankrupt” the enemy.

Now, it’s being reported that the system – which has been in development by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems for 15 years, and was originally set for a 2025 rollout, will be deployed more quickly than that due to the Israel-Hamas war, and it may be placed in service as early as 2024.

More than a hundred Rafael engineers have reportedly been working on this project, considered one of the most significant technological challenges ever faced by the Israeli defense industries, in order to create a fast and effective interception system, with inexhaustible and near cost-free ammunition.

Recent tests of Iron Beam in the Negev have shown promising results, with the system successfully intercepting various airborne threats. The heart of the system is an electric laser pointer, capable of targeting and sending out a powerful laser beam, invisible to the naked eye.

Since the war erupted on October 7, more than 10,000 projectiles have been fired at Israel, including 3,000 in the first hours of the conflict. Rafael and the Israeli Defense Ministry have considered the current operations as an opportunity to test the Iron Beam under real combat conditions. –i24news

Speaking with Calcalist, one of Rafael’s iron beam program managers expressed high hopes for the system, saying “Our aim is to reach a state where the enemy feels totally powerless. He has to understand that our laser pointers, deployed where needed, intercept and destroy all his attacks, almost instantly after they are launched, long before they reach Israeli territory or threaten anyone else. In such a scenario, the activation of warning sirens might even become unnecessary.”

Keep reading

Israeli October 7 posterchild was killed by Israeli tank, eyewitnesses reveal

In a desperate bid for international sympathy, the Israeli government has sought to stir outrage over the killing of a 12-year-old girl during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7. 

“This little girl’s body was burned so badly that it took forensic archeologists more than six weeks to identify her,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry declared on its official Twitter/X account. “All that remains of 12 year old Liel Hetzroni is ash and bone fragments. May her memory be a blessing.”

Aviva Klompas, a former speechwriter for Israel’s United Nations mission and one of the country’s top English language social media propagandists, claimed on Twitter/X, “The terrorists massacred all of [the Hetzroni’s], then torched the building.”

Naftali Bennett, the former Israeli Prime Minister, chimed in to proclaim that “Liel Hetzroni of Kibbutz Beeri was murdered in her home by Hamas monsters… We’re fighting the most just war: to ensure this can never happen again.”

Liel Hetzroni was among the noncombatants killed in Kibbutz Be’eri when the small southern Israeli community was momentarily taken over by Hamas militants seeking captives to spur a prisoner exchange. During the standoff that ensued, she was killed instantly alongside twin brother, great-aunt and several other residents of Be’eri.

However, the 12-year-old Hetzroni was not slain by Hamas. According to new testimony by an Israeli eyewitness to the girl’s death, she was killed by an Israeli tank shell alongside several neighbors.

Keep reading

U.S. FLIES ‘ROUTINE’ SPY FLIGHTS FROM UK’S CYPRUS BASE NEAR GAZA FOR ‘THIRD PARTY GOVERNMENTS’

The cable, published by WikiLeaks and classified as ‘secret’, was written in April 2008 by the US embassy in London and sent to Washington. 

A letter included in the cable is from Will Jessett, then the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) director of counter-terrorism, who asks for “new procedures for requesting intel flight clearances” regarding US spy missions from British bases.

Jessett refers to “the regular intelligence flights that the US undertakes from RAF Akrotiri” – the huge British air base on Cyprus. He added that “these flights have become routine”. 

He goes on to write that the American aircraft are flown by the State Department and US military “or possibly other agencies”, assumed to mean the CIA. 

The only US equipment the British government has ever admitted to being located on the UK’s so-called Sovereign Base Areas (SBA) on Cyprus is the U-2 spy aircraft. These have been permanently stationed at RAF Akrotiri for nearly half a century, and were originally operated by the CIA.

The 2008 letter adds that recent American U-2 spy flights from RAF Akrotiri had collected intelligence over Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon.

The cable is significant in light of current US activities on Cyprus. The US is moving arms to Israel from around Europe using RAF Akrotiri, but the Ministry of Defence has refused to tell Declassified what American aircraft are flying or what weapons are on board. US surveillance drones are also known to be flying over Gaza. 

For 50 years, the US and Britain have attempted to keep secret the size and activities of the American presence at the UK bases and “retained sites” on Cyprus. This territory, which comprises 3% of Cyprus’s landmass, was kept by the British after independence in 1960. 

Declassified also recently revealed that 129 US airmen are permanently deployed to RAF Akrotiri, which is a staging post for bombing campaigns across the Middle East. The US spy force, the 1st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, is permanently deployed at Akrotiri.

Keep reading

When the First Casualty of War Is Truth, Journalists Are the Second

Truth – and journalists – are the first casualties of the war on Gaza. As Israel’s 7-week bombardment of the Gaza Strip has killed over 14,000 Palestinians, 5,000 of whom were children, courageous Palestinian journalists, working in Gaza under unbelievably difficult and dangerous circumstances, are being killed, one by one. This week, a grim milestone was reached, as the number of journalists killed in the conflict surpassed 50. While a negotiated pause gives civilians in Gaza a brief respite, and 50 Israeli hostages held in Gaza will be released, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised the violence will continue immediately afterwards.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 53 journalists and media workers have been killed in what the organization calls “the deadliest month for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.” To date, 46 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese reporters have been killed. Eleven have been injured, three remain missing, and 18 Palestinian journalists have been arrested by Israel.

“We’ve never seen anything like this. It’s unprecedented,” Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “For journalists in Gaza specifically, the exponential risk is possibly the most dangerous we have seen.”

Keep reading

AMERICA’S UNWAVERING SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL FUELS IRAN-BACKED “AXIS OF RESISTANCE”

ON THE DAY meant to honor Hezbollah’s own martyrs, the group’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, dedicated a considerable portion of his speech to fighters elsewhere in the region. In a televised address on November 11, Nasrallah praised not just Hezbollah’s strikes on Israel launched from southern Lebanon, but also “supporting fronts” in Iraq and Syria, where armed groups have carried out more than 60 attacks on American troops in the past month.

“These actions reflect great courage because it is the Americans they are fighting, the Americans whose fleets, aircraft carriers, and bases fill the region,” Nasrallah said of his Iraqi allies. “If you Americans want these operations on the supporting fronts to stop, if you don’t want regional war, you must stop the aggression and war on Gaza.”

Nasrallah’s words indicate growing unity among the so-called axis of resistance, a network of Iran-backed actors in the Mideast that includes Hamas, Hezbollah, the Syrian government, the Houthis in Yemen, and armed groups in Iraq and Syria. Though this unity and the violence it threatens to unleash has not yet translated into major military action, it marks the most significant backlash to the U.S. presence in the region in recent years.

The resistance narrative has found appeal beyond members of the axis, many of whom the U.S. considers terror organizations. Even in more moderate circles, America’s unfettered support for Israel, in the wake of the Hamas attack on October 7, has fueled anti-American sentiment in a region where many people see Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza as an extension of decades of unjust U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Keep reading

IDF Knew Real Hamas HQ While Lying About al-Shifa 

Although corporate news media have made it clear they don’t buy the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claim that al-Shifa Hospital has been a cover for a Hamas command and control center and weapons armory, Western media have failed to report a much bigger story.

The IDF and the Israeli government already knew when they launched their propaganda campaign about al-Shifa that Hamas had no military command and control facility hidden there because it had already found the complex kilometers away.

As Consortium News reported last week, for 15 years the Israelis claimed  Hamas was operating its primary command and control base from a tunnel underneath al-Shifa. After the Israeli bombing campaign against Gaza began in October, the Israeli military amplified that message to press its contention that by hiding the Hamas high command, al-Shifa Hospital had lost its immunity from military operations under the law of war, and could now legitimately be taken over by force.

On Nov. 11, IDF spokesman Richard Hecht declared that al-Shifa was the “main hub of Hamas activity;” Newsweek reported the IDF regarded al-Shifa Hospital as “Hamas’s main command post” and the Times of Israel headlined “Hamas leaders again hiding under hospital”.

The crescendo of Israeli propaganda about al-Shifa being a “human shield” for Hamas came with a long report published by The New York Times on Nov. 14. It was based on interviews with eight present and former intelligence and defense officials, describing a vast military command complex under al-Shifa with multiple levels.

But something quite unexpected had happened during this new round of press stories on al-Shifa that completely demolished the entire IDF story line: the IDF had gained control of the real Hamas command and control center in an area where the Hamas leadership had previously had their above-ground offices in the Al Atatra neighborhood, in the extreme northwest of Beit Lahiya city, 8.5km away from al-Shifa.

After that office building was demolished, the IDF discovered a major tunnel facility that was quite certain had been the central headquarters for the Hamas high command — the command and control center for the entire war. 

As the IDF leaked to The Jerusalem Post in a story published Nov. 14, the discovery was made “several days ago” of a tunnel with an elevator that reached thirty meters underground, compared with only five meters underground in other tunnels.  Furthermore it had been equipped with oxygen, air conditioning and more advanced communications than seen anywhere else.

Keep reading

As Israel pounds Gaza, BBC journalists accuse broadcaster of bias

The BBC has been accused by its journalists of failing to tell the story of the Israel-Palestine conflict accurately, investing greater effort in humanising Israeli victims compared with Palestinians, and omitting key historical context in coverage.

In a 2,300-word letter written to Al Jazeera by eight UK-based journalists employed by the corporation, the BBC is also said to be guilty of a “double standard in how civilians are seen”, given that it is “unflinching” in its reporting of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Fearing reprisal, the journalists requested anonymity. The group does not plan to send the letter to BBC executives, believing such a move was unlikely to lead to meaningful discussions.

They sent Al Jazeera the letter as a humanitarian disaster in Gaza escalates, and as grim milestones are reached at pace. At the time of writing, more than 14,500 Palestinians have been reported as killed by Israeli bombardment, including at least 6,000 children.

“The BBC has failed to accurately tell this story – through omission and lack of critical engagement with Israel’s claims – and it has therefore failed to help the public engage with and understand the human rights abuses unfolding in Gaza,” the letter reads. “Thousands of Palestinians have been killed since October 7. When will the number be high enough for our editorial stance to change?”

Keep reading

Israel’s War on Hospitals

Israel is not attacking hospitals in Gaza because they are “Hamas command centers.” Israel is systematically and deliberately destroying Gaza’s medical infrastructure as part of a scorched earth campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and escalate a humanitarian crisis. It intends to force 2.3 million Palestinians over the border into Egypt where they will never return. 

Israel has destroyed and nearly emptied the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia is next. Israel is deploying tanks and armored personnel carriers around the hospital and has fired rounds into the building, killing 12 people. 

The playbook is familiar. Flyers are dropped by Israel over a hospital telling people to leave because the hospital is a base for “Hamas terrorist activities.” Tanks and artillery shells rip away parts of the hospital walls. Ambulances are blown up by Israeli missiles. Power and water is cut. Medical supplies are blocked. There are no painkillers, antibiotics and oxygen. The most vulnerable, premature babies in incubators and the gravely ill, die. Israeli soldiers raid the hospital and force everyone out at gunpoint. 

This is what happened at Al Shifa hospital. This is what happened at Al Rantisi Children’s Hospital. This is what happened at Gaza’s main psychiatric hospital. This is what happened at Nasser Hospital. This is what happened at the other hospitals that Israel has destroyed. And this is what will happen at the few hospitals that remain. 

Keep reading