Tag: palestine

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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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?”

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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. 

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This Is The Real Face Of The US Empire

Someone uploaded one of those viral “help identify this racist jerk” clips featuring a man accosting a street vendor with awful Islamophobic vitriol, and it turned out he was the former US State Department Deputy Director in the Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs.

It sounds made up, but that’s exactly what just happened; Vice has a whole article out about it. The video was uploaded today, and within hours the man was identified as Stuart Seldowitz, who helped direct US diplomacy on Israel-Palestine from 1999 to 2003 and then served on the Obama administration’s National Security Council. 

Seldowitz’s identity was confirmed by his former employer Gotham Government Relations, who released a statement denouncing him and saying they’ve ended all affiliation with him. 

Seldowitz is seen hounding the New York City vendor or vendors in multiple different videos wearing multiple different outfits, showing a sustained campaign of harassment and abuse. He told them while fully aware he was being filmed that Israel killing thousands of Palestinian kids “wasn’t enough”, insulted their religion, threatened them, mocked their intelligence and their English, called them terrorists, and asked “Did you rape your daughter like Mohammed did?” From the videos he appears to be harassing them for no reason other than because they are Muslims selling halal food.

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NBC Journalist Arrested in Israel on ‘Very Serious Offenses’

A reporter who is currently working for NBC News was arrested in Jerusalem last week for allegedly praising Hamas and celebrating the terror group’s Oct. 7 terror attacks on social media as they were happening.

Those attacks left at least 1,200 Israelis dead and hundreds more were kidnapped.

According to The Jerusalem Post, 45-year-old freelance reporter Marwat Al-Azza was taken into custody last Friday.

She is described by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as a Palestinian residing in East Jerusalem.

She had been wanted for questioning by police since last month over pro-Hamas Facebook posts. Last week, prosecutors granted police that request.

Haaretz reported that Al-Azza praised Hamas on her Facebook page while Israeli citizens were being massacred.

The newspaper, Israel’s oldest publication still in print, reported:

“On October 7, Al-Azza put up posts on her personal Facebook account allegedly supporting Hamas terrorism.

“She wrote on the kidnapping of an elderly woman from a Gaza border community, ‘It’s killing me, it’s a black comedy, the old woman looks happy, a bit of action before she dies.’”

Haaretz further reported in other posts on her Facebook page, Al-Azza portrayed the ongoing massacre as a film in which Hamas militants were the stars.

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Deputy Speaker of Israeli Knesset ‘We Are Too Humane. Burn Gaza Now No Less!’

An Israeli official called for the complete destruction of Gaza. In six weeks of bombing Gaza, Israeli forces have killed over 5,500 Palestinian Children. Still, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Nissim Vaturi said, “We are too humane. Burn Gaza now no less!”

Vaturi, a Lukid Member of the Knesset, made the remarks in response to the Israeli government allowing a small amount of fuel into Gaza. “All of this preoccupation with whether or not there is internet in Gaza shows that we have learned nothing. We are too humane. Burn Gaza now no less!” he demanded. “Don’t allow fuel in, don’t allow water in until the hostages are returned back!”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to allow two trucks of fuel into Gaza every other day. However, aid groups say the small amount of fuel is insufficient to maintain basic humanitarian operations.

On Friday, the UN said that it was no longer able to continue aid deliveries into Gaza as an Israeli fuel blockade of the enclave has led to a widespread communications blackout. The World Health Organization warned that the ending of aid deliveries means the “immediate possibility of starvation” for the 2.3 million people in Gaza. 

The fuel deliveries are intended to allow Palestinians to operate sewage and communications in Gaza. Still, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said allowing a small amount of fuel into Gaza is “a grave mistake.”

National Security Council chairman Tzachi Hanegbi told reporters that Tel Aviv had to allow the fuel into Gaza so it could continue its military operations. “If plague were to break out, we’d have to stop the war,” he said. 

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The Burning Question: Was 10/7 A False Flag?

The October 7th Hamas attack on Israelis has been referred to as “Israel’s 9/11,” which gives us good reason to believe that it was probably another false flag psy-op.

Some people really do believe it was a false flag, i.e., that the Israeli regime allegedly knew that it was being planned and let it happen.

As Paul Craig Roberts notes, how could Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency not know this was being planned? Don’t Israeli intelligence and military have the most sophisticated and comprehensive monitoring and surveillance of the Israeli sheeple and of Palestinians and of Hamas?

The planning allegedly was going on for 2 years. Really?

And there were warnings from other countries or intelligence agencies, including Egypt who had warned the Israelis of a terrorist attack being planned, warnings ignored.

In any event, the official narrative of “surprise” attack is just not believable. A possible motive for a false flag op as reported by Jonathan Cook is a planned expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai which is controlled by Egypt, an ethnic cleansing plan allegedly under way since at least 2007, according to Cook.

Many people dismiss such allegations as “conspiracy theory.” But would it really be that surprising that government-employed losers would intentionally allow a terrorist attack to occur, and for the sake of implementing a plan of ethnic cleansing of an entire population whose presence is inconvenient?

After all, government bureaucracies generally attract psychopaths. The worst of the worst, as F.A. Hayek had noted.

And now we are learning that there is a high probability that many of the Israelis killed on October 7th were killed by the Israeli military (IDF) itself, possibly as high as 80% of the Israeli deaths, according to Scott Ritter. And Ron Unz described the IDF as possibly “trigger-happy Apache pilots”. It has also been difficult for Israeli authorities to distinguish between many killed Israeli and Palestinian bodies.

But there is some history that is important here. The fact that Israel contributed to the creation of the Hamas organization is quite relevant to the allegation of false flag ops.

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