Curiously Curated Conspiracies, Cover Ups and Corruption. All content is 'for your consideration' only. "The Truth, when you finally chase it down, is almost always far worse than your darkest visions and fears." ~ Hunter S. Thompson
Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), dismissed the idea there are “innocent Palestinian civilians” in a debate on the House floor.
“I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians, as frequently said,” Mast said on Wednesday. “I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II.”
Mast recently wore his IDF uniform on Capitol Hill, demonstrating his staunch support for Israel. “As the only member to serve with both the United States Army and the Israel Defense Forces, I will always stand with Israel,” he wrote on X in a post showing pictures of him in the uniform.
A Michigan candidate for city council is doubling down on comments he made about Jews and the Holocaust as well as child marriage and homosexuality, the Detroit Metro Times reported.
Nasr Hussain, who is running for a seat on the Hamtramck City Council, made posts on Facebook where he said the Holocaust was “advance punishment” for Israel’s “savagery” against Palestinians in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks by Hamas.
“A heinous act proving that they’re as savage and cruel as the Nazis themselves who tormented them, or maybe even worse,” Hussain posted in a Facebook group.
He also defended child marriage.
“She was betrothed at six, marriage consummated at nine after reaching puberty and giving her consent,” Hussain wrote in response to a news story about a child getting married to an adult man. “Women reach puberty between 8 and 12. If she was ok with it and her parents were ok with it why does it bother you.”
The House on Wednesday passed a resolution that suggested the US would use force against Iran in the future in the name of preventing the country from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The resolution says a nuclear-armed Iran is “unacceptable” and declares that it’s the policy of the US to “use all means necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
A US intelligence report recently affirmed that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, but reality doesn’t stop Iran hawks in the US and Israel from constantly hyping up the threat of a non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program. The same officials do not officially recognize that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal.
The resolution passed in a vote of 354-53, with 50 Democrats and three Republicans voting against the measure. Explaining his opposition, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) because it seemed like a call for war.
Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny acknowledged in comments to The Economist that the war in Ukraine is a stalemate and that there will “most likely” be no Ukrainian breakthrough.
“Just like in the First World War, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” the general said. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
Ukraine gained no significant territory in its counteroffensive that was launched back in June. Media reports and the Discord leaks revealed that the US, Kyiv’s main backer, did not think Ukraine would have much success, but the Biden administration pushed for the counteroffensive anyway.
Zaluzhny discussed changes he tried to make during the counteroffensive. “First I thought there was something wrong with our commanders, so I changed some of them. Then I thought maybe our soldiers are not fit for purpose, so I moved soldiers in some brigades,” he said.
After the changes failed, Zaluzhny said he looked to a book published in 1941 by a Soviet major general that analyzed World War I. “And before I got even halfway through it, I realized that is exactly where we are because just like then, the level of our technological development today has put both us and our enemies in a stupor,” he said.
Zaluzhny said that both sides can always see the other coming, thanks to modern technology. “The simple fact is that we see everything the enemy is doing and they see everything we are doing. In order for us to break this deadlock, we need something new, like the gunpowder which the Chinese invented and which we are still using to kill each other,” he said.
AS THE WAR between Israel and Hamas threatens to draw in Yemen, the United States military’s little noted boots on the ground in the war-torn country raise the specter of deepening American involvement in the conflict.
On Monday, Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels fired ballistic and cruise missiles at Israel. The attack marked the first time ballistic missiles have been launched at Israel since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles at Israel in 1991, according to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and expert on the region. The use of ballistic missiles represents a major escalation that threatens to ignite a regional war — with American troops stationed nearby.
“The best strategy to avoid getting sucked into another war in the Middle East is to not have troops unnecessarily in the region in the first place — and bring those who are there now home,” said Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank that advocates for a restrained foreign policy. “Their presence there is not making America more safe, it’s putting America more at risk of yet another war in the Middle East.”
Around 40 people affiliated with the National Justice Party, a white nationalist and antisemitic group, gathered in front of the White House to protest Israel last weekend. The group was led by Mike Peinovich, a long-time white nationalist personality who previously used the alias “Mike Enoch,” and was one of the architects of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Israel “is a pure genocidal state, make no mistake,” Peinovich told rally attendees over a PA system. “We Americans have been snookered into supporting [Israel] by Jewish control of our banks, our media, and our politicians, but we have to say enough and rise up as a people.”
Their small demonstration was dwarfed by the hundreds-strong protest that flooded the streets of Washington D.C. But Peinovich’s rhetoric is an example of how far-right antisemites are trying to use the pro-Palestine movement, hijack some of its language criticizing the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, and then use that as a vehicle to push anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and tropes into the mainstream.
The presence of the National Justice Party in D.C. shouldn’t be seen as an indication that there is some ideological kinship between that group and the wider pro-Palestine movement. Fringe extremist groups are first and foremost opportunists, and will leap at any chance to insert themselves into a popular movement.In 2020, the anti-government Boogaloo movement’s gun-toting adherents—including white supremacists—unsuccessfully tried to latch onto the Black Lives Matter movement by claiming they shared similar goals.
“They’re not pro-Palestine, they just hate Jews, and they see this moment as an opportunity to get attention, get coverage, put their banners, their images, their ideas, into reporting patterns,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told VICE News of the recent displays by brazen antisemites. “Nine out of ten of them would probably happily commit a hate crime against anyone [at the pro-Palestine protest].”
The pro-Palestine movement has picked up enormous support in recent weeks, with hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets in cities around the world to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, where intense bombardment by the Israeli government has led to the deaths of more than 8,000 people, including thousands of children.
Israel’s official social media account on X, formerly known as Twitter, published a video supposedly showing a Palestinian corpse in a body bag moving on Monday, along with the caption, “Reminder: The Gaza Ministry of Health=Hamas… Bodies can’t move their heads.”
The post received more than 4.5 million views, 27,000 likes, and 7,800 reposts before it was eventually deleted on Wednesday.
“The official government account for Israel once again spread the Pallywood conspiracy theory which claims Palestinians are crisis actors performing for videos & faking their death,” reacted journalist Matt Binder on X. “They deleted it now but it already had been viewed more than 4.5 million times in the past two days.”
CONGRESS IS CONSIDERING a bill that would significantly slow down humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip amid ongoing airstrikes and a ground invasion by Israel that have left at least 8,000 dead and strained critical resources in the already besieged Palestinian territory.
The debate over the bill comes two weeks after its sponsor said U.S. officials should make all efforts to slow down any humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza and suggested that there is no distinction between civilians — including children — and the militant group Hamas that massacred some 1,300 Israelis in an October 7 surprise attack.
The original text in the bill — the Hamas International Financing Prevention Act, or H.R. 340 — allowed a humanitarian exemption to provide food, medicine, and medical devices to civilians in Gaza. During committee markup, Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., the sponsor, offered an amendment to remove the language and replace it with a provision that would require President Joe Biden to issue a case-by-case waiver to approve humanitarian aid transfers.
“Any assistance should be slowed down — any assistance,” Mast had said in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the bill last month. “Because I would challenge anybody in here to point to me, which Palestinian is Hamas, and which one is an innocent civilian? Which is the child that was poking other Israeli children?” — a reference to a viral video allegedly showing Palestinian boys prodding an Israeli Jewish hostage in Gaza — “And which ones exactly are the innocent ones? It should absolutely be every effort made to slow down any perceived assistance that’s going there.”
A series of Israeli airstrikes hit the densely packed Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza on Tuesday, in what Israel said was an attempt to take out a senior Hamas commander in the area.
The Associated Press reported that at least six Israeli airstrikes hit residential dwellings in the heart of the refugee camp on the outskirts of Gaza City, citing the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.
Gaza officials told Reuters that 50 Palestinians were killed and 150 more wounded. Footage from the scene showed people searching through gutted concrete apartment blocks for loved ones, per Reuters.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday claimed the airstrikes killed Ibrahim Biari, the commander for Hamas’s Central Jabaliya Battalion, along with “neutralizing” an estimated 50 other “terrorists.”
Asked about the Israeli attack on the Jabalya camp later on Tuesday, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said he could not “speak to individual Israeli strikes,” but that the U.S. believes “taking civilian safety into account is both a moral and a strategic obligation.”
The mass murder of innocent Palestinian civilians by Israel continues, with the bombing of the Jabaliyah refugee camp north of Gaza City on Wednesday. Israel initially claimed that 50 Hamas fighters were killed in the attack though only one Hamas leader is confirmed dead.
So far 100 people are feared dead, 300 are wounded with many hundreds more feared trapped in the rubble. Al Jazeera reports that six Israeli bombs hit the camp where more than 100,000 thousand refugees are crowded into a square kilometer.
Jabaliyah is the largest refugee camp in Gaza, established after the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from what became Israel. The camp is seen by Israel as a Hamas stronghold. The First Intifada started there in 1987.
It was the fourth time Israel struck the camp since Oct. 7, the date of Hamas’ attack on Israel that killed 1,400 people. On Wednesday the camp was struck for a fifth time, despite the growing international outcry over Tuesday’s attack. Israel said it killed Ibrahim Biari, who it named as the “ringleader” of the Oct. 7 attacks. However in the process, dozens of civilians were also killed.
Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who has tended to Gaza’s wounded in previous Israeli attacks, in remarks to Al Jazeera, called it a “mass murder” and demanded to know why Joe Biden is not putting a stop to the killing. It may be the worst massacre in Israel’s nearly one month war on Gaza.
Hellbound and Down 
You must be logged in to post a comment.