Tag: perpetual war

Resistance ops nearly doubled ‘all over Israel’ in two years

Resistance operations against Israelis, particularly in the occupied West Bank, have surged dramatically since the start of the year, Hebrew media reported on 16 August. 

According to Israeli news outlet Channel 12, hundreds of operations have been carried out since the start of 2024. Despite most of them being in the West Bank, the operations have targeted “every point in Israel.” 

Israel’s Channel 10 correspondent Noam Cohen also noted a surge in resistance operations across Israel and the occupied West Bank over the past 10 months. 

Between 7 October and the current month, 338 resistance operations were carried out against Israelis, Cohen said, adding that this marks an 82 percent surge compared to 2022 and around a nine percent jump since last year. 

Commenting on the increase in the average number of operations per month, Cohen said the average was five in 2020, 10 in 2021, and 17 in 2022. Since 7 October, it has become an average of 31 per month, the correspondent added. 

The majority of the over 300 operations since October have been in the West Bank. Ten were in occupied Jerusalem and 28 took place in the territories occupied in 1948. 

The operations have killed 28 settlers and wounded over 250.

Two Israelis were killed in a stabbing operation in Holon, near Tel Aviv, on 4 August.

An Israeli prison guard was found dead in his home in the occupied West Bank in early July. It was discovered later that month that he was killed by a member of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, Ibrahim Mansour, who was detained by Israeli forces on 22 July. 

One soldier was killed and others injured in a stabbing operation in the Karmiel settlement on 3 July. These are just a few examples.

The surge in operations comes as there has also been a massive spike in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 7 October.

Around 100 armed Israeli settlers invaded the Palestinian town of Jit in the occupied West Bank on 15 August, firing bullets at residents and setting homes, cars, and other property on fire. 

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‘Incomprehensible’: US Approves $20 Billion in New Arms for Israel as Gaza Death Toll Tops 40,000

Health officials in Gaza said Thursday that the official death toll from Israel’s 10-month war has topped 40,000, though that is believed to be a vast undercount of the true figure. The grim milestone was reached just days after the Biden administration greenlit $20 billion in additional weapons sales to Israel, including 50 F-15 fighter jets, tank ammunition, mortar rounds, tactical vehicles and advanced air-to-air missiles. The U.S. approved the sales despite growing calls for an arms embargo on Israel. “This is just a continuation of a policy that has been going on now for 10 months of the U.S. providing to Israel all the arms that it requests,” says Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest over Gaza policy in October. “It is a dark day for American foreign policy.” We also speak with Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who says it’s “incomprehensible” that the U.S. keeps supplying Israel with weapons. “There should be no more arms going into that place before there is a ceasefire.”

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‘Unlawful Transfer’ – Israel Issues New Evacuation Orders to Palestinians in Gaza

Today’s evacuation orders come a few days after the United Nations (UN) announced that 84 percent of the population in Gaza is under evacuation orders by the Israeli army.

The Israeli army issued new evacuation orders on Friday to Palestinians in various areas previously classified as “humanitarian safe zones” in central and southern Gaza.

The evacuation warnings came in the form of text messages sent to residents and displaced Palestinians alike along with flyers dropped in the northern area of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, and in neighborhoods in the eastern part of Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, according to Reuters news agency.

The Israeli army claimed that these areas were used by Hamas “as a base for firing mortars and rockets towards Israel,” Reuters said.

Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas uses civilian infrastructure and population as command centers for its operations.

The Palestinian group, however, has always denied operating from civilian facilities.

In 2014, following a deadly Israeli war on the Strip, Amnesty International investigated Israeli claims and reported that no evidence was found that the Palestinian group intentionally used civilians as shields.

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So what really happened in Kursk?

An extremely serious debate is already raging among selected circles of power/intelligence in Moscow – and the heart of the matter could not be more incandescent.

To cut to the chase: what really happened in Kursk? Was the Russian Ministry of Defense caught napping? Or did they see it coming and profited to set up a deadly trap for Kiev?

Well-informed players willing to share a few nuggets on condition of anonymity all stress the extreme sensitivity of it all. An intel pro though has offered what may be interpreted as a precious clue: “It is rather surprising to see such a concentration of force was unnoticed by satellite and drone surveillance at Kursk, but I would not exaggerate its importance.”

Another intel pro prefers to stress that “the foreign intel section is weak as it was very badly run.” This is a direct reference to the state of affairs after former security overseer Nikolai “Yoda” Patrushev, during Putin’s post-inauguration reshuffle, was transferred from his post as secretary of the Security Council to serve as a special presidential aide.

The sources, cautiously, seem to converge on a very serious possibility: “There seems to have been a breakdown in intel; they do not seem to have noticed the accumulation of troops at the Kursk border”.

Another analyst though has offered a way more specific scenario, according to which a hawkish military faction, spread across the Ministry of Defense and the intel apparatus – and antagonistic to the new Minister of Defense Belousov, an economist – let the Ukrainian invasion proceed with two objectives in mind: set a trap for Kiev’s top enemy commanders and troops, who were diverted from the – collapsing – Donbass front; and put extra pressure on Putin to finally go for the head of the snake and finish off the war.

This hawkish faction, incidentally, regards Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov as “totally incompetent”, in the words of one intel pro. There’s no smoking gun, but Gerasimov allegedly ignored several warnings about a Ukrainian buildup near the Kursk border.

A retired intel pro is even more controversial. He complains that “traitors of Russia” actually “stripped three regions from troops to surrender them to the Ukrainians.” Now, these “traitors of Russia” will be able “to ‘exchange’ the city of Suzha for leaving the fake country of Ukraine and promote it as an inevitable solution.”

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The world is far closer to nuclear annihilation than the ‘Doomsday Clock’ shows.

The “Doomsday Clock” is from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which is the mainstream academic authority in the United States and throughout its empire on the question of how close or how far the world is to a nulcear war that will be between the superpowers and (according to the scientific studies) produce 5 billion human deaths (half of the population dead) within the first two years after the explosions. When the world is getting closer to that — which is marked as midnight on the Doomsday Clock — the clock is set forward towards midnight; when the world is getting farther from it, that clock is moved backward. The President and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is Dr. Rachel Bronson, whose background is at the U.S. Council of Foreign Relations, CSIS, Harvard University’s Belfer Center, and other top U.S. institutions that are backed financially by and represent America’s armaments manufacturers and billionaires. 

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Ukraine Wants to Start Talks Using Kursk Nuclear Plant Seizure as Ultimatum – Akhmat Head

The Ukrainian Armed Forces went on the offensive on August 6 to seize territory in Russia’s Kursk region, but their advance was stopped, said Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russia’s General Staff. He stressed that the operation in Kursk will be completed by defeating the enemy and reaching the state border.

Units of the Russian Armed Forces are in the Kursk city of Sudzha, which the enemy does not control but there are daily clashes, commander of the Akhmat special forces Apti Alaudinov told Russian media.

“Today there are units of the Russian Defense Ministry in Sudzha. There is an enemy around and in some parts of the city. There are active clashes there every day. The enemy cannot say that he completely controls Sudzha, because he does not really control it,” Alaudinov said.

The major general also said that Kiev is planning on seizing the Kursk nuclear power plant on August 11 and use this to start negotiations with Moscow with an ultimatum.

“We received very interesting materials — the whole layout of the operation, which was being prepared, by what forces and what was planned. What can I say: on the 11th [of August] it was necessary to take the nuclear power plant in Kurchatov… [Ukrainian President] Zelensky’s blitzkrieg, which was planned with the seizure of the Kursk nuclear power plant and already entering negotiations with an ultimatum… failed,” Alaudinov explained.

The operation had not been completed, despite all the reserves directed by Kiev in this direction, Alaudinov said.

“Most of the equipment has already been destroyed from what was deployed in the Kursk direction,” Alaudinov concluded.

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Israel approves new West Bank settlement on UNESCO World Heritage Site

The Israeli government on 14 August officially approved municipal boundaries for a new settlement on a UNESCO World Heritage Site near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

Jewish supremacist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said his office had “completed its work and published a plan for the new Nahal Heletz settlement in Gush Etzion,” a bloc of settlements south of occupied Jerusalem.

“No anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist decision will stop the development of settlements. We will continue to fight against the dangerous project of creating a Palestinian state by creating facts on the ground. This is my life’s mission, and I will continue it as much as I can,” the Israeli official, who lives in an illegal settlement, said via social media.

All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have planning permission or not.

The Israeli Civil Administration published a blue line – a land survey process in which the administration ensures which lands are private and which are not – of 602 dunams (3.7 kilometers) for the establishment of the new Nahal Heletz settlement.
According to the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now, the intended area of the new settlement was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO. “Smotrich continues to promote de facto annexation, disregarding the UNESCO Convention that Israel is a signatory to, and we will all pay the price,” the organization said in a statement.

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Israeli forces using Palestinians as human shields to locate bombs in Gaza: report

The Israeli army has been using abducted Palestinian civilians as human shields in Gaza, an investigation by Ha’aretz has said, adding to previous allegations of a similar nature from Palestinian and Israeli sources.

The civilians, who the soldiers refer to as shawish, or ‘sergeant’ in Arabic, are used by the army to carry out dangerous search operations while dressed in Israeli army uniform, according to soldiers who spoke to the Israeli news outlet.

Soldiers deployed to Gaza who spoke to Haaretz said they were told it was preferable for a Palestinian to be killed by a booby trap bomb than an Israeli soldier.

In some instances, children and elderly people were abducted and forced to search tunnels for the army.

“There were times when really old people were made to go into houses,” one soldier said. 

Another soldier, who said that reports on Israel’s use of human shields by outlets like Al Jazeera reflected their experience, recounted an instance when a 16-year-old was abducted by the army and forced to search a tunnel. While some civilians were detained for a day to be used for searches, some were kept for 

“About five months ago, two Palestinians were brought to us. One was 20 and the other was 16. We were told: ‘Use them, they’re Gazans, use them as human shields,” the soldier said.

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War Powers: The True History of George Washington and the Indian Tribes

Supporters of unilateral executive war power want you to believe presidents can make all kinds of decisions about war and peace because, as they tell the story, George Washington engaged in military conflicts with Native Americans without getting authorization from Congress. 

They’re either ignorant or lying – or both.

The Constitution delegates the power to “declare war” to Congress. Many people think this power is limited to issuing some kind of proclamation or document, but declaring war is a much broader concept. During the founding era, it was understood as the power to change the condition of things from peace to war.

The Constitution delegated this power to Congress because the founding generation didn’t want a single individual making such a significant decision. James Madison explained it this way:

“The separation of the power of declaring war, from that of conducting it, is wisely contrived, to exclude the danger of its being declared for the sake of its being conducted.”

But according to most people on both the left and the right today, the Constitution leaves all kinds of wiggle room for the president to take military action on his own authority. To support this narrative, they claim George Washington unilaterally engaged in military action against American Indian tribes without any congressional authorization.

This narrative doesn’t stand up to the facts. Not even close.

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U.S. is Sending America’s Children to Die in the Middle East Fighting a Religious War Defending Israeli Forces Who Proudly Rape Their Prisoners

World War III is now expanding in the Middle East, with a full blown battle all but certain in the days ahead, as the U.S. is deploying National Guard troops and rapidly deploying America’s young men and women to the Middle East, where many of them are sure to die fighting a religious war as they defend Israel.

States have been training and deploying National Guard troops to the Middle East since the beginning of this year (More than 300 Illinois National Guard soldiers prepare for deployment to Middle East – Hundreds of Army National Guard members deploy to middle east), with the latest deployments this past week occurring in Oregon and Pennsylvania.

Many of these National Guard members have never even been outside the U.S. before.

Pa. National Guard soldiers prepare to deploy to Middle East: ‘It’s a mixture of nerves and excitement’

Over the next few months, dozens of U.S. soldiers with the Pennsylvania National Guard’s 213th Personnel Company will be deployed to Kuwait and Jordan.

The soldiers, who range from teenagers to those in their early 40s, will be deployed in three different groups for nine to 12 months and will support U.S. Central Command and partner forces with security objectives in the region.

First, there will be a period of pre-mobilization training in the U.S. before soldiers deploy to the Middle East.

Soldier Alyssa Wenger, 23, of Chambersburg, a four-year member of the Pennsylvania National Guard, like Danner, will be deploying for the first time.

“It’s a mixture of nerves and excitement,” she said.

She said she will miss her family back home but considers those she is deploying with family as well.

For Wenger, a Wilson College graduate who commuted to school, this is the longest time she will be away from her family.

“That’s going to be my biggest challenge. I’ve never really been away from my parents and my siblings,” she said.
And this is also the first time that Watkins, a mother of three, will go through deployment as her husband is being deployed.

“So as a wife, I’m just trying to keep my family in line — emotions are OK. It’s OK to cry but at the same time, we have to keep moving forward. And we have to keep doing what we would normally do on a daily basis,” she said. (Source.)

In Oregon, the part-time soldiers are being told that deployment to the Middle East will enhance their careers.

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