Tag: palestine

Ban on protests supporting Palestinians is disproportionate attack on the right to protest in France

Following the request from the Minister of the Interior Gerald Darmanin asking the prefects in France to ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations, Jean-Claude Samouiller, President of Amnesty International France said:

“The ban on all demonstrations in support of the Palestinians in France constitutes a serious and disproportionate attack on the right to demonstrate.

Faced with the atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel, and also the blockade and very heavy bombings in the Gaza Strip, it is important that civil society actors can mobilize peacefully and publicly, in particular those calling on those engaged in the conflict to respect the rights of civilian populations. This is why there cannot be a systematic ban on the right to peacefully demonstrate support for the rights of the Palestinian populations.

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More children killed in Gaza than Ukraine

More Palestinian children were killed in the first few days of Israeli attacks on Gaza than Ukrainian children in 18 months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Though I follow many international developments closely, this stunned me.

American television viewers have routinely been told that Russia’s attack on Ukraine is extremely brutal.

How much worse must be the brutality meted out to Palestinian children to have all this death packed into a matter of days as the Western media fail to convey the full horror of what is happening in Gaza and how quickly.

According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) regarding Ukraine, as of 5 October, it had “verified that 9,806 civilians, including 560 children, have been killed as a result of the war. The Office has also verified that 17,962 people, including 1,196 children, have been injured.”

Defense for Children International – Palestine reported Monday afternoon that already more than 1,000 children have been killed in Gaza.

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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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