Tag: palestine

Nobody Knows Who Attacked the Hospital

Yesterday, the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City was struck in the single deadliest day of violence since October 7. Hundreds of people have allegedly died, with some estimates claiming as many as 500, though it is hard to confirm the exact toll at this stage. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it was an accidental explosion by the group Islamic Jihad; the terrorist group says the IDF is deflecting blame and is actually responsible for the attack.

The IDF “was not firing in the area, Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said,” reports the Associated Press. Per Hagari, “Israeli radar confirmed a rocket barrage fired by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad from a nearby cemetery at that time of the blast, around 6:59 p.m.”

“The misfired rocket hit the parking lot outside the hospital. Were it an airstrike, there would have been a crater there; instead, the fiery blast came from the misfired rocket’s warhead and its unspent propellant,” said the IDF spokesperson.

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Israeli Intelligence Suddenly Able To Intercept Hamas Communications

Another strange thing about Israel’s claim that its intelligence services didn’t detect preparations for the Hamas attack on October 7 is the fact that it is now releasing what it claims are intercepted conversations of Hamas fighters talking to each other about matters of high importance.

Israel has released an audio clip of two voices which it claims belong to Hamas militants speaking about the hotly disputed explosion at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on Tuesday. The IDF had previously told the press that it would be releasing intercepted conversations which prove Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not Israel, was responsible for the blast.

Here’s a transcript of Israel’s English translation of the dialogue:

Hamas Operative #2: I’m telling you this is the first time that we see a missile like this failing and so that’s why we are saying it belongs to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Hamas Operative #1: What?

Hamas Operative #2: They are saying it belongs to Palestinian Islamic Jihad

Hamas Operative #1: It’s from us?

#2: It looks like it

#1: Who says this?

#2: They are saying that the shrapnel from the missile is local shrapnel and not like Israeli shrapnel

#1: What are you saying (name bleeped)?

#2: But God bless, it couldn’t have found another place to explode?

#1: Nevermind, (name bleeped), yes they shot it from the cemetery behind the hospital

#2: What?

#1: They shot it coming from the cemetery behind the Al-Ma’amadani Hospital, and it misfired and fell on them

#2: There is a cemetery behind it?

#1: Yes, Al-Ma’amadani is exactly in the compound

#2: Where is it when you enter the compound?

#1: You first enter the compound and don’t go towards the city and it’s on the right side of the Al-Ma’amadani Hospital.

#2: Yes , I know it.

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Yellen Says the US Can Afford to Fund Wars in Gaza and Ukraine

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen insisted on Monday that the US could “certainly” afford to fund the war in Ukraine and Israel’s onslaught on Gaza as the White House is looking for more military aid for both conflicts.

Yellen’s comments came a day after President Biden said the US could fund both wars. “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history — not in the world, in the history of the world. The history of the world. We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense,” he said on 60 Minutes.

Yellen said the House needs to elect a new speaker so the new funding could be authorized. “We do need to come up with funds, both for Israel and for Ukraine. This is a priority,” she said. “It’s really up to the House to find, seat a speaker and to put us in a position where legislation can be passed.”

The White House has also discussed the possibility of rolling funding to arm Taiwan into the potential spending package. But Yellen did not mention Taiwan, and other Biden administration officials have made clear this week that Ukraine and Israel are the priority.

“America can certainly afford to stand with Israel and to support Israel’s military needs and we also can and must support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia,” Yellen said.

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Israel’s Official Ethnic Cleansing Program

The missing context for what’s happening in Gaza is that Israel has been working night-and-day to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their homeland since even before Israel become a state — when it was known as the Zionist movement.

Israel didn’t just cleanse Palestinians in 1948, when it was founded as a Western colonial project, and again under cover of a regional war in 1967. It also worked to ethnically cleanse Palestinians every day between those dates and afterwards. The aim was to move them off their historic lands and either expel them beyond Israel’s new, expanded borders or concentrate them into small ghettos inside those borders — as a holding measure until they could be expelled outside the borders.

[Related: Britain Is Ensuring the Death of a Palestinian State]

The “settler” project, as we call it, is a misnomer. It’s really Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme. Israel even has a special word for it in Hebrew: “Judaisation,” or making the land Jewish. It is official government policy.

Gaza was the largest of the Palestinian reservations created by Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme and the most overcrowded. To stop the inhabitants spilling out, Israel built a fence-barrier in the early 1990s to pen them in. Then when policing became too hard from within the prison, Israel pulled back in 2005 to the outer perimeter barrier.

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Israeli forces shot their own civilians, kibbutz survivor says

An Israeli woman who survived the Hamas assault on settlements near the Gaza boundary on 7 October says Israeli civilians were “undoubtedly” killed by their own security forces.

It happened when Israeli forces engaged in fierce gun battles with Palestinian fighters in Kibbutz Be’eri and fired indiscriminately at both the fighters and their Israeli prisoners.

“They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she told Israeli radio. “There was very, very heavy crossfire” and even tank shelling.

The woman, 44-year-old mother of three Yasmin Porat, said that prior to that, she and other civilians had been held by the Palestinians for several hours and treated “humanely.” She had fled the nearby “Nova” rave.

A recording of her interview, from the radio program Haboker Hazeh (“This Morning”) hosted by Aryeh Golan on state broadcaster Kan, has been circulating on social media.

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2,000 US troops preparing for deployment to support Israel if needed, officials say

The United States military has chosen about 2,000 American troops to potentially deploy to support Israel, U.S. defense officials said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The selected troops are currently stationed in the Middle East and other locations, including Europe, officials said, adding the troops are not expected to serve in combat roles. Instead, they will provide advising and medical support.

It is unclear what could trigger the deployment.

The deployment preparations come after the U.S. State Department announced Sunday that the number of Americans killed in the recent Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel has increased to 30.

According to a statement attributed to a State Department official, the government has been able to “confirm the deaths of 30 U.S. citizens” in Israel. In addition to the American citizens who have been killed in Israel, the State Department official confirmed that multiple U.S. citizens are currently missing in Israel.

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Lessons in Atrocity Propaganda

It has been a little over a week since Hamas attacked Israel.

In that week, we have learned more of what 5th Generation Warfare looks and feels like in the context of actual battles taking place in a geographic theater of war.

Although the Israel-Palestine conflict has demonstrated an evolution in asymmetric warfare, this article will not discuss, per se, the tactics or politics of asymmetric warfare as deployed by Hamas.

As we have witnessed, in contrast to a specific tactic, 5th Generation Warfare involves us all. As James Corbett wrote in April:

“There is a world war happening right now. It is a fifth-generation war (or whatever you want to call it). It is being waged across every domain simultaneously. It is a war for full-spectrum dominance of every battlefield and every terrain, from the farthest reaches of the globe (and beyond) to the inner spaces of your body and even to your innermost thoughts. And it is a war on you.”

This observation is not meant to cheapen the suffering of those on the ground, or to equate the rending of flesh with the rending of the mind. It is, however, an acknowledgement that the war over public opinion makes us all combatants in some small way. The accessibility and pervasiveness of modern media increases this involvement a hundredfold.

To fully analyze the evolution of 5th Generation Warfare through this conflict, an at least cursory understanding of each side’s objectives is necessary.

Very crudely speaking, they are as follows:

For Israel, a religious war ending with the complete annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the ultimate defeat of Hamas. This would mean the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land. To do this, Israel must control the international narrative enough for the world to turn a blind eye, and to prevent other Muslim nations from entering the conflict.

For Hamas, the purpose of the attacks was to provoke Israel into committing atrocities against the Palestinians that would turn the international community against Israel and “force the Muslim states and armed groups everywhere to take a stand.” If that means sacrificing civilians, they are martyrs; Inshallah.

With those objectives in mind, the Israeli dissemination of atrocity propaganda actually aids Hamas in achieving its goals because public outrage enables Israel to overreact, which is exactly what Hamas desires.

This means that the public mind isthe crucial battleground in this conflict. Except, as we have seen over the last week, the public is no longer a silent observer.

Indeed, public comment has had an even more pronounced effect than during the war in Ukraine, where critical reporters debunked the “Ghost of Kiev” and highlighted the truth about the alleged Russian missile attack on Poland.

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 Israeli minister seeks arrest of journalists who ‘harm national morale’

Israel‘s communications minister is proposing emergency regulations that would allow police to arrest citizens and journalists who publish content deemed to “harm national morale”.

Under Shlomo Karhi’s proposal, those restrictions could be placed upon publications that have been used as a “base for enemy propaganda”.

Journalists and other citizens could have their homes searched, property seized and could be placed under arrest for speech the government deems undesirable.

The proposal comes on the ninth day of fighting between Israel and Palestinian groups, which has killed at least 2,450 Palestinians in Gaza, including 724 children and 458 women. In the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, 56 people have been killed by Israeli fire. Meanwhile, at least 1,300 people have been killed in Israel.

Earlier on Sunday, Karhi said he was seeking a possible closure of Al Jazeera’s local bureau, accusing the Qatari news station of pro-Hamas incitement and of exposing Israeli soldiers to potential attack from Gaza.

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FBI TARGETS MUSLIMS AND PALESTINIANS IN WAKE OF HAMAS ATTACK, CIVIL RIGHTS ADVOCATES WARN

FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT agents have questioned and detained Palestinian nationals and made visits to mosques in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel, according to civil rights advocates.

Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, or ADC, said that his organization has fielded multiple reports of individuals and mosques being visited by the FBI this week. The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, a police accountability group, also said it had received reports of federal agents intimidating Palestinians and their supporters. 

The interactions are reminiscent of surveillance and targeting of Muslim and Arab communities in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and Ayoub told The Intercept that they are contributing to a resurgence of fear among Muslim communities. “Like, ‘Oh my god, this is happening again, how are we going to protect ourselves?’”

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Israel warns Hezbollah – beware what happened to Hamas: Minister says Israel does NOT want a war in the north but if the Iran-backed militia force one ‘it will pay a very heavy price’ after rocket fired from Lebanon kills Israeli

Israel has warned Hezbollah it would pay a ‘very heavy price’ if the Iranian-backed movement enters the ongoing conflict.

The Israeli government said today it was willing to fight a war on two or more fronts as it issued a stark warning to its northern neighbour to stay out of the clashes taking place between it and Hamas.

The country’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said the Jewish state did not want a war with Lebanon and was prepared to show restraint despite shooting from both sides taking place at the border which has claimed the life of at least one Israeli so far.

It comes Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza following last week’s raids by Hamas which are confirmed to have killed hundreds of Israeli civilians and soldiers. It has confirmed that at least 155 people have also been taken hostage by the terrorist organisation.

Military leaders had warned the people of Gaza City, which is close to the border with Israel, that they should evacuate ahead of a planned ground offensive into the Palestinian territory. Officials have said at least 600,000 have done so so far. 

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