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Palestine Tet – 34 – Four day ceasefire. Will it hold?

November 24, 2023

The US and its allies will continue backing Israel’s war on Gaza after a brief truce. But as the case for ‘genocide’ grows stronger, the new multipolar powers will have to confront the old hegemons and their Rules-Based Chaos.

Pepe Escobar

NOV 23, 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle

While the world cries “Israeli genocide,” the Biden White House is gushing over the upcoming Gaza truce it helped broker, as though it’s actually “on the verge” of its “biggest diplomatic victory.”

Behind the self-congratulatory narratives, the US administration is not remotely “wary about Netanyahu’s endgame,” it fully endorses it – genocide included – as agreed at the White House less than three weeks before Al-Aqsa Flood, in a 20 September meeting between Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe “The Mummy” Biden’s handlers.

The US/Qatar-brokered “truce,” which is supposed to go into effect this week, is not a ceasefire. It is a PR move to soften Israel’s genocide and boost its morale by securing the release of a few dozen captives. Moreover, the record shows that Israel never respects ceasefires.

Predictably, what really worries the US administration is the “unintended consequence” of the truce, which will “allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel.”

Real journalists have been working in Gaza 24/7 since October 7 – dozens of whom have been killed by the Israeli military machine in what Reporters Sans Frontieres calls “one of the deadliest tolls in a century.”

These journalists have spared no effort to go all the way to “illuminate the devastation,” a euphemism for the ongoing genocide, shown in all its gruesome detail for the entire world to see.

Even the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), itself relentlessly attacked by Israel, revealed – somewhat meekly – that this has been “the largest displacement since 1948,” an “exodus” of the Palestinian population, with the younger generation “forced to live through traumas of ancestors or parents.”

As for public opinion all across the Global South/Global Majority, it “turned” long ago on Zionist extremism. But now the Global Minority – populations of the collective west – are watching raptly, horrified, and bitter that in just six weeks, social media has exposed them to what mainstream media hid for decades. There will be no turning back now that this penny has dropped.

A former Apartheid state leads the way

The South African government has paved the path, globally, for the proper reaction to an unfolding genocide: parliament voted to shutter the Israeli embassy, expel the Israeli ambassador, and cut diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv. South Africans do know a thing or two about apartheid.

They, like other critics of Israel, better be extra wary moving forward. Anything can be expected: an outbreak of foreign intel-conducted “terra terra terra” false flags, artificially induced weather calamities, fake “human rights abuse” charges, the collapse of the national currency, the rand, instances of lawfare, assorted Atlanticist apoplexy, sabotage of energy infrastructure. And more.

Several nations should have by now invoked the Genocide Convention – given that Israeli politicians and officials have been bragging, on the record, about razing Gaza and besieging, starving, killing, and mass-transferring its Palestinian population. No geopolitical actor has dared thus far.

South Africa, for its part, had the courage to go where few Muslim and Arab states have ventured. As matters stand, when it comes to much of the Arab world – particularly the US client states – they are still in Rhetorical Swamp territory.

The Qatar-brokered “truce” came at precisely the right time for Washington. It stole the spotlight from the delegation of  Islamic/Arab foreign ministers touring selected capitals to promote their plan for a complete Gaza ceasefire in Gaza – plus negotiations for an independent Palestinian state.

This Gaza Contact Group, uniting Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Palestine, made their first stop in Beijing, meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and then on to Moscow, meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. That was definitely an instance of BRICS 11 already in action – even before they started business on January 1st, 2024, under the Russian presidency.

The meeting with Lavrov in Moscow was held simultaneously with an extraordinary online BRICS session on Palestine, called by the current South African presidency. Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, whose country leads the region’s Axis of Resistance and refuses any relations with Israel, supported the South African initiatives and called for BRICS member states to use every political and economic tool available to pressure Tel Aviv.

It was also important to hear from Chinese President Xi Jinping himself that “there can be no security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine.”

Xi stressed once again the need for “a two-state solution,” the “restoration of the legitimate national rights of Palestine,” and “the establishment of an independent state of Palestine.” This should all start via an international conference.

None of this is enough at this stage – not this temporary truce, not the promise of a future negotiation. The US administration, itself struggling with an unexpected global backlash, at best, arm-wrestled Tel Aviv to enact a short “pause” in the genocide. This means the carnage continues after a few days.

Had this truce been an actual “ceasefire,” in which all hostilities came to a halt and Israel’s war machine disengaged from the Gaza Strip entirely, the next-day options would still be pretty dismal. Realpolitik practitioner John Mearsheimer already cut to the chase: a negotiated solution for Israel-Palestine is impossible.

It takes a cursory glance at the current map to graphically demonstrate how the two-state solution – advocated by everyone from China-Russia to much of the Arab world – is dead. A collection of isolated Bantustans can never coalesce as a state.

Let’s grab all their gas

There has been thundering noise all across the spectrum that with the advent of the petroyuan getting closer and closer, the Americans badly need Eastern Mediterranean energy bought and sold in US dollars – including the vast gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.

Enter the US administration’s energy security advisor, deployed to Israel to “discuss potential economic revitalization plans for Gaza centered around undeveloped offshore natural gas fields:” what a lovely euphemism.

But while Gaza’s gas is indeed a crucial vector, Gaza, the territory, is a nuisance. What really matters for Tel Aviv is to confiscate all Palestinian gas reserves and allot them to future preferential clients: the EU.

Enter the India-Middle East Corridor(IMEC) – actually the EU-Israel-Saudi Arabia-Emirates-India Corridor – conceived by Washington as the perfect vehicle for Israel to become an energy crossroads power. It fancifully imagines a US-Israel energy partnership trading in US dollars – simultaneously replacing Russian energy to the EU and halting a possible export increase of Iran’s energy to Europe.

We return to the 21st century’s main chessboard here: the Hegemon vs. BRICS.

Beijing has had steady relations with Tel Aviv so far, with lavish investment in Israeli high-tech industries and infrastructure. But Israel’s pounding of Gaza may change that picture: no real Sovereign can hedge when it comes to real genocide.

In parallel, whatever the Hegemon may come up with in its various hybrid and hot war scenarios against the BRICS, China, and its multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), that will not alter Beijing’s rational and strategically formulated trajectory.

This analysis by Eric Li is all one needs to know about what lies ahead. Beijing has mapped out all relevant tech roads to follow in successive five-year plans, all the way to 2035. Under this framework, BRI should be considered a sort of geoeconomics UN without the G7. If you’re outside of BRI – and that concerns, to a large extent, old comprador systems and elites – you’re self-isolating from the Global South/Global Majority.

So what remains of this “pause” in Gaza? By next week, the western-backed cowards will restart their genocide against women and children, and they will not stop for a good long while. The Palestinian resistance and the 800,000 Palestinian civilians still living in northern Gaza – now surrounded on all sides by Israeli troops and armored vehicles – are proving that they are willing and able to bear the burden of fighting the Israeli oppressor, not only for Palestine but for everyone, everywhere, with a conscience.

Despite such a terrible price to be paid in blood, there will eventually be a reward: the slow but sure evisceration of the imperial construct in West Asia.

No mainstream media narrative, no PR move to soften the genocide, no containment of “public opinion turning on Israel” can ever cover the serial war crimes perpetrated by Israel and its allies in Gaza. Perhaps this is just what the Doctor – metaphysical and otherwise – ordered for mankind: an imperative global tragedy, to be witnessed by all, that will also transform us all.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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Palestine Tet – 36 – Humanitarian Pause 2. (Don’t Get Too Excited)

November 24, 2023
tags:

 

 

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To the contrary, not only will Hamas “survive” but outside a narrowing circle of NATO countries, its regional and international prestige is soaring. If Washington were more realistic – which it isn’t – it would understand that it cannot avoid negotiating with a Palestinian delegation that includes Hamas sometime in the future. The days when the U.S. could, among its opponents, pick its preferred negotiating partner, are long over. The Palestinians will decide who represents them and with whom to negotiate.

There is a growing likelihood that despite an uptake in the military confrontation that sooner or later these humanitarian pauses will morph into a more lasting ceasefire, a proper, durable ceasefire, at which time a more serious Palestinian-Israeli negotiating process will begin to take shape, one in which new forces – the BRICS, the Global South will probably play a greater role than they have in the past, perhaps, as some are suggesting, even wresting control of the diplomatic process in the Middle East from Washington’s hands.

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from Rai al Youm, yesterday (November 23, 2023):

For 48 days, the Israeli army has been waging a devastating war on Gaza that has left more than 14,532 martyrs, including more than 6000 children and 4000 women as well as more than 35,000 injured, about 75% of which are children and women, according to the government media office in Gaza.

1.

After a day’s delays, a four day pause in Israel’s genocidal campaign against Gaza, and the Palestinian military response to that, is underway. It is heartening to see Red Cross ambulances and vans involved at the Rafah Crossing exchanging prisoners and seeing loved ones on both sides reunited with family and friends. Any pause in the fighting hints at a further step – a more permanent humanitarian pause leading to a ceasefire, a truce and then setting up a long term internationally negotiated settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli “conflict”.

The word “conflict” is put in quotations because it is, to be more accurate, the latter stage of a Palestinian struggle against Israeli settler colonialism which has run its course since the publication of the Balfour Declaration, a mere memo written by the British government to the Zionist leadership at the end of WW2, giving the latter what Britain had no right to do: the right to develop a Zionist settlement in Palestine. No Palestinian nor Arab entity was consulted or had any voice in its creation.

106 years on the struggle between the Zionist settler colonial project and the Palestinian struggle for national self-determination continue unabated the only different being that Zionism has exchanged Great Britain with the United States for its neo-colonial master.

I mention this, not so much for rhetorical purposes but to clarify that Israel’s conduct, from the unrelenting storming of the Al Aqsa Mosque – the lite the fire on October 7 – to the scramble on Israel’s part to steal and annex more territory in the West Bank carving Palestinian strongholds into little bantustans to the sanctions, blockade and current policy of Gazan Palestinians – all this is planned in Washington and executed in Tel Aviv.

This, the Zionist project in Palestinian and the greater Middle East, is an American run, orchestrated, financed and armed by Washington for its own geopolitical ends. So-called “shared values” take a backseat to “shared interests” – keeping the oil and the profits that come from it flowing, stabilizing the U.S. dollar through oil and gas sales in dollars, propping up reactionary, right-wing Arab governments (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan come to mind) to be Washington regional water carriers along with Israel.

2.

Josh Paul, former Director in the State Department’s Bureau of Political Military Affairs who resigned over the Biden Administration’s encouragement of the Israeli massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza commented:

I welcome the agreement brokered by Qatar that will, it has been reported, provide a pause in fighting, allow for the release of 50 Israeli hostages and 150 Palestinian hostages, and enable more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza during this period. It is my fervent hope that this pause will be extended into a true and lasting ceasefire, and that all hostages and political prisoners will be released, and that humanitarian aid will flow unimpeded into Gaza, and that a radically re-envisioned peace process can be quickly established that leads to a just and lasting peace: this would be an outcome that is in the interest of all innocent civilians.

Paul, whom Joel Edelstein and I interviewed on KGNU recently, went on to worry that the Israeli offensive will pick up again:

I am concerned, however, by both public reporting and discussions I have had with U.S. officials that this will not be the case, and that once the anticipated truce has expired, Israel will continue its military operations, including by pushing into Southern Gaza. I am equally concerned by reports, again from both public reporting and personal contacts, that the U.S. Government remains committed to supporting Israel’s military operations, including through the continued and expedited provision of lethal weaponry without, as the National Security Council Spokesperson has previously said, any redlines.

Concerning the pause, Elijah Magnier notes:

These ceasefires do not necessarily indicate a fundamental shift in long-term goals or strategies but rather reflect a temporary and pragmatic response to the immediate realities of the conflict. The broader goals and strategies often remain in place, with ceasefires as brief interludes in ongoing and protracted conflicts

So it is with this humanitarian pause. Read more…

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Palestine Tet – 35 – The Pause 1. (Don’t get too excited)

November 24, 2023
tags:

Gaza: a pause before the storm

The US and its allies will continue backing Israel’s war on Gaza after a brief truce. But as the case for ‘genocide’ grows stronger, the new multipolar powers will have to confront the old hegemons and their Rules-Based Chaos.

Pepe Escobar

NOV 23, 2023

Photo Credit: The Cradle

While the world cries “Israeli genocide,” the Biden White House is gushing over the upcoming Gaza truce it helped broker, as though it’s actually “on the verge” of its “biggest diplomatic victory.”

Behind the self-congratulatory narratives, the US administration is not remotely “wary about Netanyahu’s endgame,” it fully endorses it – genocide included – as agreed at the White House less than three weeks before Al-Aqsa Flood, in a 20 September meeting between Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe “The Mummy” Biden’s handlers.

The US/Qatar-brokered “truce,” which is supposed to go into effect this week, is not a ceasefire. It is a PR move to soften Israel’s genocide and boost its morale by securing the release of a few dozen captives. Moreover, the record shows that Israel never respects ceasefires.

Predictably, what really worries the US administration is the “unintended consequence” of the truce, which will “allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel.”

Predictably, what really worries the US administration is the “unintended consequence” of the truce, which will “allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel.”

Real journalists have been working in Gaza 24/7 since October 7 – dozens of whom have been killed by the Israeli military machine in what Reporters Sans Frontieres calls “one of the deadliest tolls in a century.”

These journalists have spared no effort to go all the way to “illuminate the devastation,” a euphemism for the ongoing genocide, shown in all its gruesome detail for the entire world to see.

Even the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), itself relentlessly attacked by Israel, revealed – somewhat meekly – that this has been “the largest displacement since 1948,” an “exodus” of the Palestinian population, with the younger generation “forced to live through traumas of ancestors or parents.”

As for public opinion all across the Global South/Global Majority, it “turned” long ago on Zionist extremism. But now the Global Minority – populations of the collective west – are watching raptly, horrified, and bitter that in just six weeks, social media has exposed them to what mainstream media hid for decades. There will be no turning back now that this penny has dropped.

A former Apartheid state leads the way

The South African government has paved the path, globally, for the proper reaction to an unfolding genocide: parliament voted to shutter the Israeli embassy, expel the Israeli ambassador, and cut diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv. South Africans do know a thing or two about apartheid.

They, like other critics of Israel, better be extra wary moving forward. Anything can be expected: an outbreak of foreign intel-conducted “terra terra terra” false flags, artificially induced weather calamities, fake “human rights abuse” charges, the collapse of the national currency, the rand, instances of lawfare, assorted Atlanticist apoplexy, sabotage of energy infrastructure. And more.

Several nations should have by now invoked the Genocide Convention – given that Israeli politicians and officials have been bragging, on the record, about razing Gaza and besieging, starving, killing, and mass-transferring its Palestinian population. No geopolitical actor has dared thus far.

South Africa, for its part, had the courage to go where few Muslim and Arab states have ventured. As matters stand, when it comes to much of the Arab world – particularly the US client states – they are still in Rhetorical Swamp territory.

The Qatar-brokered “truce” came at precisely the right time for Washington. It stole the spotlight from the delegation of  Islamic/Arab foreign ministers touring selected capitals to promote their plan for a complete Gaza ceasefire in Gaza – plus negotiations for an independent Palestinian state.

The Qatar-brokered “truce” came at precisely the right time for Washington. It stole the spotlight from the delegation of  Islamic/Arab foreign ministers touring selected capitals to promote their plan for a complete Gaza ceasefire in Gaza – plus negotiations for an independent Palestinian state.

This Gaza Contact Group, uniting Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Palestine, made their first stop in Beijing, meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and then on to Moscow, meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. That was definitely an instance of BRICS 11 already in action – even before they started business on January 1st, 2024, under the Russian presidency.

The meeting with Lavrov in Moscow was held simultaneously with an extraordinary online BRICS session on Palestine, called by the current South African presidency. Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, whose country leads the region’s Axis of Resistance and refuses any relations with Israel, supported the South African initiatives and called for BRICS member states to use every political and economic tool available to pressure Tel Aviv.

It was also important to hear from Chinese President Xi Jinping himself that “there can be no security in the Middle East without a just solution to the question of Palestine.”

Xi stressed once again the need for “a two-state solution,” the “restoration of the legitimate national rights of Palestine,” and “the establishment of an independent state of Palestine.” This should all start via an international conference.

None of this is enough at this stage – not this temporary truce, not the promise of a future negotiation. The US administration, itself struggling with an unexpected global backlash, at best, arm-wrestled Tel Aviv to enact a short “pause” in the genocide. This means the carnage continues after a few days.

Had this truce been an actual “ceasefire,” in which all hostilities came to a halt and Israel’s war machine disengaged from the Gaza Strip entirely, the next-day options would still be pretty dismal. Realpolitik practitioner John Mearsheimer already cut to the chase: a negotiated solution for Israel-Palestine is impossible.

It takes a cursory glance at the current map to graphically demonstrate how the two-state solution – advocated by everyone from China-Russia to much of the Arab world – is dead. A collection of isolated Bantustans can never coalesce as a state.

Let’s grab all their gas

There has been thundering noise all across the spectrum that with the advent of the petroyuan getting closer and closer, the Americans badly need Eastern Mediterranean energy bought and sold in US dollars – including the vast gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.

Enter the US administration’s energy security advisor, deployed to Israel to “discuss potential economic revitalization plans for Gaza centered around undeveloped offshore natural gas fields:” what a lovely euphemism.

But while Gaza’s gas is indeed a crucial vector, Gaza, the territory, is a nuisance. What really matters for Tel Aviv is to confiscate all Palestinian gas reserves and allot them to future preferential clients: the EU.

Enter the India-Middle East Corridor(IMEC) – actually the EU-Israel-Saudi Arabia-Emirates-India Corridor – conceived by Washington as the perfect vehicle for Israel to become an energy crossroads power. It fancifully imagines a US-Israel energy partnership trading in US dollars – simultaneously replacing Russian energy to the EU and halting a possible export increase of Iran’s energy to Europe.

We return to the 21st century’s main chessboard here: the Hegemon vs. BRICS.

Beijing has had steady relations with Tel Aviv so far, with lavish investment in Israeli high-tech industries and infrastructure. But Israel’s pounding of Gaza may change that picture: no real Sovereign can hedge when it comes to real genocide.

In parallel, whatever the Hegemon may come up with in its various hybrid and hot war scenarios against the BRICS, China, and its multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), that will not alter Beijing’s rational and strategically formulated trajectory.

This analysis by Eric Li is all one needs to know about what lies ahead. Beijing has mapped out all relevant tech roads to follow in successive five-year plans, all the way to 2035. Under this framework, BRI should be considered a sort of geoeconomics UN without the G7. If you’re outside of BRI – and that concerns, to a large extent, old comprador systems and elites – you’re self-isolating from the Global South/Global Majority.

So what remains of this “pause” in Gaza? By next week, the western-backed cowards will restart their genocide against women and children, and they will not stop for a good long while. The Palestinian resistance and the 800,000 Palestinian civilians still living in northern Gaza – now surrounded on all sides by Israeli troops and armored vehicles – are proving that they are willing and able to bear the burden of fighting the Israeli oppressor, not only for Palestine but for everyone, everywhere, with a conscience.

Despite such a terrible price to be paid in blood, there will eventually be a reward: the slow but sure evisceration of the imperial construct in West Asia.

So what remains of this “pause” in Gaza? By next week, the western-backed cowards will restart their genocide against women and children, and they will not stop for a good long while. The Palestinian resistance and the 800,000 Palestinian civilians still living in northern Gaza – now surrounded on all sides by Israeli troops and armored vehicles – are proving that they are willing and able to bear the burden of fighting the Israeli oppressor, not only for Palestine but for everyone, everywhere, with a conscience.

Despite such a terrible price to be paid in blood, there will eventually be a reward: the slow but sure evisceration of the imperial construct in West Asia.

No mainstream media narrative, no PR move to soften the genocide, no containment of “public opinion turning on Israel” can ever cover the serial war crimes perpetrated by Israel and its allies in Gaza. Perhaps this is just what the Doctor – metaphysical and otherwise – ordered for mankind: an imperative global tragedy, to be witnessed by all, that will also transform us all.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

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Palestine Tet – 33 – The broader emerging Middle East War: Is Washington preparing to try to weaken Iran by striking at Yemeni Houthi rebels? Another doomed Washington scenario.

November 22, 2023

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(Note: A huge U.S. armada, described below in some detail, has been assembled “in a wide arc of the so-called Greater Middle East”. Its main goal is to, through military might, attempt to regain Washington and Tel Aviv’s lost influence and power that was punctured in the Palestinian October 7 military operation from Gaza into southern Israel. According to M.K. Bhadrakumar, an Indian former diplomat and analyst to whom I frequently refer (because he is as good as it gets), in an effort to strike a blow at Iran and in revenge against the Yemeni Houthis having shot down a U.S. surveillance drone, Washington is preparing to bomb Houthi positions to neutralize them as a political military force. This would open up yet another front in the Middle East wars. We will see.
I respect Bhadrakumar’s insights enough to republish his analysis [once again]. Suggest it is carefully read. Another Washington boondoggle in the making. RJP)

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Indian Punchline

US embarks on a proxy war against Iran

M.K. Bhadrakumar – November 20, 2023

A massive US naval deployment in a wide arc of the so-called Greater Middle East is under way — stretching from Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean, into the Red Sea and the Bab el Mandeb and into the Gulf of Aden and all the way into the Gulf of Oman…

A massive US naval deployment in a wide arc of the so-called Greater Middle East is under way — stretching from Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean, into the Red Sea and the Bab el Mandeb and into the Gulf of Aden and all the way into the Gulf of Oman. This deterrent display may transform as large scale offensive operations and aims to rework the geopolitical alignments and bring them back to the traditional grooves of intra-regional rivalries in the Gulf region.

Ship spotters first said that as of Thursday, the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its escorts were sailing just outside the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf of Oman, and were approaching the Persian Gulf. A Pentagon official confirmed the location but would not say whether the carrier will enter the Persian Gulf passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

The US naval build-up in the region consists of another carrier strike group as well — USS Ford and its escorts — which last week moved away from Israeli coast and is now re-positioned to the south of Crete, according to ship spotters, apparently beyond the missile reach of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Apart from the two carrier strike groups, the US deployment also includes a three-ship Bataan Amphibious Ready Group with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit and several guided-missile destroyers — USS Bataan and USS Carter Hall operating in the northern portion of the Red Sea, and USS Mesa Verde in the Eastern Mediterranean along with the command ship USS Mount Whitney.

Additionally, there are some number of US attack submarines in the region, but the Pentagon does not typically disclose their locations — except for a rare disclosure recently by the US Central Command of the transit on November 5 of nuclear guided-missile submarine USS Florida to the east of Suez.

The most obvious explanation for such a formidable naval buildup is that it is part of the US effort to keep the current conflict in southern Israel and Gaza contained. Hezbollah continues to fire rockets and anti-tank missiles into Israel from Lebanon; Iran-backed Shia militant groups are attacking US bases in Iraq and Syria; and Houthi rebels in Yemen are firing missiles towards Israel. During the period since October 17, there have been at least 58 attacks on US bases, mostly in Iraq.

The hardline opinion in the US is that the militant groups attacking the US forces are acting at Iran’s behest. This allegation is an old US-Israeli bogey and keeps surging whenever Iran is in the crosshairs and/or there is requirement of a blame game. Expert opinion, including in the US, has always been wary of it.

Longtime observers estimate that while Tehran is openly helping the various resistance groups operating in the Middle East to push back the US and Israel, that does not exactly make these groups “Iranian proxies”. Thus, it transpired that Iran was taken by surprise by the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7. According to Reuters, at a recent meeting in Tehran with Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of the group’s political bureau, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei brought this up.

Longtime observers estimate that while Tehran is openly helping the various resistance groups operating in the Middle East to push back the US and Israel, that does not exactly make these groups “Iranian proxies”. Thus, it transpired that Iran was taken by surprise by the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7. According to Reuters, at a recent meeting in Tehran with Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of the group’s political bureau, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei brought this up.

At any rate, it is a known fact that the US establishment is well aware of the ground realities of its state of play with Iran and has not hesitated to use back channels to lean on Tehran to use its good offices with the Shia militant groups operating in Iraq to exercise restraint. But the bottom line is that Iran too has its limitations in such extraordinary times such as today when hatred and anger towards the US and Israel has risen to a crescendo in the Muslim countries.

Interestingly, coinciding with the arrival of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its escorts in the waters off the Strait of Hormuz, the International Maritime Security Construct [IMSC] — a consortium of countries headquartered in Bahrain, whose official stated aim is the maintenance of order and security in the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Gulf of Aden and Southern Red Sea, particularly regarding maritime security of global oil supply routes — issued an advisory on Thursday for vessels travelling through the approaches to Bab al Mandeb and Red Sea and specifically advising that “when choosing routes, orient toward creating maximum feasible distance from Yemeni waters.”

Two days later, the Israeli military has said that Yemen’s Houthis had actually seized a cargo ship in the southern Red Sea as it was sailing from Turkiye to India; although the military added that the vessel was not Israeli-owned and had no Israelis among its crew, ownership details in public shipping databases associated the ship’s owners with Ray Car Carriers, which was founded by Abraham “Rami” Ungar, who is known as one of the richest men in Israel.

It doesn’t need much ingenuity to figure out that the US, which is already smarting under the humiliation of the Houthis shooting down a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over international waters recently, is moving against the Houthis. This needs some explaining.

The point is, IMSC is a US-led “coalition of the willing” outside the purview of the mission of the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations specialised agency “to promote safe, secure, environmentally sound, efficient and sustainable shipping through cooperation.”

It was established in 2019 against the backdrop of the war in Yemen and comprises, amongst others, the UAE and Saudi Arabia from the Gulf region. Its leitmotif was to counter the Iran-Houthi axis during the Saudi-Emirati intervention in Yemen — essentially, as part of the US’ containment strategy against Iran dominating the regional politics at that time.

Significantly, if the Biden Administration plans to hit the Houthis and makes it look as a retaliatory / punitive strike and to that end, it is invoking the IMSC platform, which belongs to a bygone era before the Saudi-Iran rapprochement brokered by China, that becomes a brilliant geopolitical ploy where the US hopes to achieve multiple objectives kill many birds with a single arrow.

These objectives range from bringing down Iran by a notch or two in the regional folklore of power dynamic; driving a wedge between Saudi Arabia and Iran at a juncture when the amity between the two traditional rivals is frustrating the US plans to “integrate” Israel; res-establishing the shock and awe of US power in the Middle East (and globally); keeping the Red Sea shipping lines open for Israeli vessels; and, in strategic terms, dominating the waterways of the Red Sea leading to the Suez Canal.

By the way, Red Sea is lately witnessing big power contestation — China has a naval base in Djibouti and Russia hopes to establish a submarine base in Sudan; Eritrea is a virulently anti-US littoral state on Red Sea; and, US is desperately trying for a regime change in Ethiopia, the largest country in the African continent, which is on very friendly terms with Russia.

A quagmire for the US?

Even more curious is the timing of the US aircraft carrier group in the Persian Gulf region. The Chinese foreign ministry announced on Sunday that a delegation consisting of Arab and Islamic foreign ministers will visit China from November 20 to 21 to hold “in-depth communication and coordination” with Beijing “on ways to deescalate the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict, protect civilians and seek a just settlement of the Palestinian question.” The delegation comprises Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki and Secretary General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Hussein Brahim Taha.

The above development is a Saudi initiative. There is no question that the collective outreach by the Muslim countries to China as their principal interlocutor at the present stage of the Palestine-Israel conflict is a diplomatic rebuff to the US. Succinctly put, the Arab unity is also becoming a thorn in the flesh for President Biden at a time when the US finds it increasingly difficult to block the Chinese-Arab push for a ceasefire in Gaza and counter the international condemnation of Israel’s horrific violence against the Palestinian people, especially in the Global South.

By attacking the Houthis of Yemen, the Biden administration’s game plan is to undermine the Saudi-Iran rapprochement by playing on the Saudi antipathy toward the Houthis on the one hand and taunting Tehran on the other hand. Basically, the US hopes to pay Iran back in the same coin.

As an opinion piece in the Hill put it, “It is time Biden and his principal advisers on his national security team… must assume an active defence by striking Iranian proxies hard and unapologetically, when they present a threat, not after they have already attacked. And probable cause must be good enough for protecting our service members manning remote bases in Iraq and Syria… bloody nose is the only response Iran understands, and precisely the response the US must deliver.” (here)

The Biden Administration must be sensing already that the Israeli operations against Hamas are not getting anywhere and may turn into a long day’s journey into night, thanks to the Zionist state’s stubborn refusal to confront its guilt and shame or accept a two-state solution to the Palestine issue. The American public opinion is becoming skeptical about Biden’s handling for the situation and the US’ allies feel troubled. Indeed, Israel itself is a deeply divided house.

Meanwhile, the US’ diplomatic isolation in the Middle East is touching an unprecedented level today. The big question is whether through coercion — “smart power” — it is possible to retrieve lost ground where the crux of the matter is that the US is not trusted anymore in the Middle East. Moreover, Iran holds the patent for “smart power,” which it has finessed as a diplomatic tool through the past four decades successfully to ward off existential challenges from the US.

The US risks getting entangled with the resistance groups, which have nothing to lose and everything to gain by creating a quagmire for Washington. The heart of the matter is that the resistance groups are operating in their native lands and enjoy vast networks of social support. This, therefore, becomes an unequal battle, in the final analysis. Whether it is worth taking the risk — all for the sake of boosting the sagging Israeli morale — should be a soul-searching question for the Biden Administration before embarking on yet another forever war in the Middle East.

M.K. Bhadrakumar – November 20, 2023

 

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Palestine Tet – 32 – The Wasteland: The Colorado Congressional Delegation’s pretexts for not supporting an Immediate Ceasefire.

November 21, 2023

Denver, Colorado. November 4, 2023. Photo Credit: Alejandra Castaneda

__________________________

“You can’t sincerely sympathize with the slaughter taking place in Gaza and then work and vote against a ceasefire. Those comments of sympathy, those tears are crocodile tears. You just want the credit for sounding humane and then you do whatever the heck you want”

– Nancy Fey speaking of the Members of Congress from Colorado coming up with pathetic excuses of why they can’t support an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Palestine.

“America is actively working to prevent a ceasefire… America is already part of this war. The trickle of humanitarian aid is matched by a flood of weapons going to Israel, so America is directly aiding the war.”

– Daniel Levy, liberal Israeli Commentator –

__________________________

1. In the latest Gaza Humanitarian Report distributed to members of Congress by the Colorado Palestine Community and Allies the facts of the extent of the horrific damage that Israel has perpetrated on the Palestinian people of Gaza was elaborated. It included:

  • Death toll and injuries in Gaza stood at 12,000 including 4702 children and 3160 women. 29,000 injured. 3,600 people including 1755 children are reported missing/trapped in the rubble
  • 1.4 million Gazans displaced
  • Schools, places of worship, hospitals and UN facilities targeted. This includes 127 hospitals attacked
  • Gaza is in a state of societal collapse.

The report, with references, continues to document the implosion of the different forms of life support under attack by Israeli missile strikes from the air and increasing the number of IDF forces entering Gaza on the ground.

The same day, in South Africa, the parliament there voted in favor of closing the Israeli embassy.

2. We’ve seen so many of them – Jason Crow, Yadira Caraveo, John Hickenlooper, Michael Bennet, Joe Neguse, Brittany Pettersen – all in-person meetings that lasted about an hour each. The “we” who organized these meetings is the Colorado Palestine Club Lobbying Committee, members of Colorado’s Palestinian Community, along with local supporters and constituents.

Our purpose – ask/press the members of Congress to publicly come out and support calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Palestine, to freeze the fighting, and begin the process of setting up an international architecture to resolve the crisis. At the time of this writing we have yet to visit Diana DeGette (D-Colorado representing greater Denver metro area).

Will her take be different? At all more promising?

Oh yes, of course and to end Israel’s genocidal bombing of Gaza, freeze its “mowing the lawn”, ethnic cleansing project in Gaza.

It was as if, one way or another, all of these members of Congress, had consulted each other and come away with a common take on how to respond to the Israeli frenzy: if necessary, meet with the Palestinian delegation and their allies; be personally polite, personable (and they were); sympathize with the humanitarian crisis – even shed a tear or two if you are able without blaming either Israel or the United States for having caused it; encourage the participants to talk more, so you will have to talk less; find a way to turn the discussion away from supporting a ceasefire using whatever filibuster tactics at your disposal (Hickenlooper was especially apt here); if it is not possible to guide the discussion away from a ceasefire, when all else fails, blame Hamas. Shake everyone’s hand and say a few personal words at the end. Read more…

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Palestine Tet – 31 – Fighting Amalek in Gaza: What Israelis Say and Western Media Ignore

November 19, 2023
tags:

Protesting Israel’s War on Gaza. Colorado State Legislature. Saturday, November 18, 2023

Fighting Amalek in Gaza: What Israelis Say and Western Media Ignore

Written and compiled by Yaniv Cogan and Jamie Stern-Weiner

Israel’s allies have claimed that it “is not deliberately trying to kill civilians” (US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby) and is “taking every precaution to avoid harming civilians” (UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak).

Such claims are hard to square with the massive devastation Israel has inflicted. As of 10 November, over 11,000 people in Gaza were reported killed, including more than 4,500 children, and at least 45 percent of housing units were reported damaged or destroyed.

They are hard to square with the findings of leading human rights organisations that Israel has inflicted “collective punishment” (Human Rights Watch) as part of a “criminal policy of revenge” (B’Tselem), employed “[s]tarvation … as a weapon of war” (Oxfam), and carried out “unlawful … attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, which caused mass civilian casualties” (Amnesty International).

They are hard to square with Israel’s previous assaults on Gaza, which were calibrated to “punish, humiliate, and terrorise” the civilian population by deploying an “insane amount of firepower” that caused “destruction on a whole other level”. In its “previous wars on Gaza”, Amnesty International recalled, “Israel has a horrific track record of committing war crimes with impunity”.

Finally, claims that Israel is striving to protect civilians in Gaza are most hard to square with how Israeli officials have presented the current onslaught:

To serve as a reference, we have compiled the following list of revealing statements by Israeli officials, former officials, and politicians about the ongoing massacre in Gaza. Translations from Hebrew have been verified. Quotes are presented in date order, starting with the most recent. The list will be updated periodically.

[Last update: 12 November 2023]

Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Nissim Vaturi MK (Likud, governing), 12 November: “We need to put them [the Palestinians] on boats and send them to wherever will be good for them. They’re wanted in Scotland? We’ll hand them over.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, 11 November: “I am saying here to the citizens of Lebanon, I already see the citizens in Gaza walking with white flags along the coast and moving south … If it [Hezbollah] makes mistakes of this kind, the ones who will pay the price are first of all the citizens of Lebanon. What we are doing in Gaza we know how to do in Beirut”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 10 November: “We will hold Gaza after the war too, we will not trust international forces”

Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, 5 November: “there are no uninvolved [civilians] in Gaza”.

Reporter: “Should we drop an atomic bomb on Gaza?”

Eliyahu: “That’s one way”³

Yitzhak Kroizer MK (Otzma Yehudit, governing), 5 November: “the Gaza Strip should be flattened, and there should be one sentence for everyone there—death. We have to wipe the Gaza Strip off the map. There are no innocents there”

MK Amit Halevi MK (Likud, governing), 1 November: “it is totally unacceptable that the war on [sic] Gaza will end with any Palestinian rule [there]. The main form of defeat understood by radical Islam is loss of control over land, and this must be the result [of the war]. Therefore, the first step the Knesset must pursue is to undo the law which forbids the entry of Jews into Gaza”⁶

Former head of the Knesset National Security Commission and Mossad Deputy Director Ram Ben Barak MK (Yesh Atid, opposition), 1 November: “Look, a Hamas official said a few days ago that they won’t provide for the population [of Gaza], the population are all refugees and the UN should provide for them, right? There was such a statement from someone in Hamas? Well, if everyone in Gaza is a refugee, let’s scatter them around the world. Let’s scatter them around the world. There are 2.5 million people there, every country will take in 20,000 people, 100 countries. It’s humane, it’s an obvious [solution]. They are refugees anyway, it is better to be a refugee in Canada than a refugee in Gaza. If the world really wants to solve this problem, it can solve it”⁷

Galit Distel-Atbaryan MK (Likud, governing), 1 November: “Hate the enemy. Hate the monsters. […] Spend your energy on one thing; wiping Gaza off the face of the earth. Let the Gazan monsters fly to the southern fence and flee into Egyptian territory. Or have them die. And have them die horribly. Gaza must be wiped out. And fire and billows of smoke must be upon the heads of the Nazis in Judea and Samaria. Jewish wrath that will cause the ground to shake around the world. We require a revengeful and cruel IDF. Anything less than that is immoral. Simply immoral”

Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, 1 November: “The north of the strip—more beautiful than ever. Blowing up and flattening everything, simply a delight for the eyes. (A soldier in Gaza). We must speak about the day after. In my mind’s eye, we give away real estate to anyone who fought for Gaza over the years, and those who were evacuated from Gush Katif—god willing. (Without Merkhavim Muganim Dirati’im) [without the threat of rockets]”

Advisor to Defence Minister Gallant, former Head of the National Security Council and former IDF operations chief Giora Eiland, 30 October: “Hizbullah will only be deterred if it sees not only destruction in Gaza City, but a humanitarian disaster and absolute governmental chaos … Our principal challenge is to persuade our friends that only that outcome—the complete destruction of all system in Gaza and desperate distress—will also serve them in their effort to cope with Iran and its proxies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen”⁸

Former Deputy Commander IDF Gaza Division Amir Avivi, 29 October: “We are not taking any chances … When our soldiers are manoeuvring we are doing this with massive artillery, with 50 aeroplanes overhead destroying anything that moves”

Former Likud MK and former Knesset Deputy Speaker Moshe Feiglin, 27 October (?): “Do not leave a stone upon a stone in Gaza. Gaza needs to turn into Dresden … Complete incineration. No more hope … Annihilate Gaza now! Now!”¹¹

Former Israeli Ambassador to Italy and Israel Hayom columnist Dror Eydar, 26 October: “For us, there is one purpose: to destroy Gaza, to destroy this absolute evil”

Former Likud MK Moshe Feiglin, 26 October (?): “There is one and only one solution, which is to completely destroy Gaza before invading it. And when I talk about destruction, I mean destruction like it was in Dresden and Hiroshima, without a nuclear weapon”

Advisor to Defence Minister Gallant, former Head of the National Security Council and former IDF operations chief Giora Eiland, 25 October: “We can’t, simply can’t, give in with anything related to the entry of fuel into Gaza. Yes, the Palestinians will present [to the world] babies who died in incubators as a result of a power outage due to the lack of fuel, but still, a necessary condition for creating distress for Hamas is a lack of fuel in the entire Strip. As we have already said—[it’s] an existential war, and we are facing a situation of either us or them”

Revital “Tally” Gotlieb MK (Likud, governing), 23 October: “Without hunger and thirst among the Gazan population, we will not succeed in recruiting intelligence, [or] … in bribing people with food, drink, medicine, in order to obtain intelligence”

Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King, 17 October: “If the Prime Minister … cared, or his ministers from the State of Israel cared, there would have been 150,000 dead already in the Gaza Strip and not a single building in the Gaza Strip would have been left standing”

Former Head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, 16 October: “Currently Gaza is under siege. If you’ve heard my statements on the matter, I said ‘don’t blink’—I’ve seen [now] the first blink … —letting in water to the south of Gaza … If this was done due to pressure from the international community, which doesn’t understand that Gazan civilians went through the fence—civilians! Not just the Hamas terrorists—you’ve seen them in the pictures, completely unarmed, they didn’t have RPGs, they didn’t arrive on motorcycles, looting and participating in the deplorable murder of women and babies” [He doesn’t finish the point because the interviewer moves on to the next question, but the implication is that the civilian population of Gaza should be punished]

Meirav Ben-Ari MK (Yesh Atid, opposition), 16 October: “And the children in Gaza—the children in Gaza have brought this upon themselves!”

Gideon Sa’ar MK (Blue and White, governing), 14 October: “Gaza must be smaller by the end of the war”¹³

Energy Minister Israel Katz, 13 October: “All the civilian population in gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world”

Advisor to Defence Minister Gallant, former Head of the National Security Council and former IDF operations chief Giora Eiland, 13 October: “Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, compelling tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Egypt or the Gulf. In order for this to happen, Israel needs to demand four key points with greater determination than ever before. 1) The entire population of Gaza will either move to Egypt or move to the Gulf … 2) Every vehicle in Gaza is considered a military vehicle transporting combatants. Therefore, there is no vehicular traffic, and it does not matter whether it is transporting water or other critical supplies … Israel has no choice. It is comparable to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, which led to the launch of an atomic bomb in Japan. As a result, Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist”

Unnamed Israeli defence official, 10 October: “Gaza will eventually turn into a city of tents. There will be no buildings”

IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari, 10 October: “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy”

Revital “Tally” Gotliv MK (Likud, governing), 10 October: “Only an explosion that shakes the Middle East will restore this country’s dignity, strength, and security! It’s time to kiss doomsday. Shooting powerful missiles without limit. Not flattening a neighbourhood. Crushing and flattening Gaza. Otherwise, we would have done nothing. Not with passwords, with penetrating bombs. Without mercy! Without mercy!”

Advisor to Defence Minister Gallant, former Head of the National Security Council and former IDF operations chief Giora Eiland, 10 October: “Israel closed the water supply to Gaza, but there are many wells in Gaza, which contain water which they treat locally, because originally they contain salt. If the energy shortage in Gaza makes it so that they stop pumping out water, that’s good. Otherwise we have to attack these water treatment plants in order to create a situation of thirst and hunger in Gaza, and I would say, signal [sic] an unprecedented economical and humanitarian crisis”

Interviewer: Giora, I want to check that I understand correctly. You are saying—get the residents of Gaza into thirst, into hunger. These are the terms you are using?

“You understood correctly…. Exactly 90 years ago, 1933, Hitler was democratically elected in Germany, with huge support from the German population, and therefore when he started a war of extermination against the whole world, the world justly fought against the country of Germany, including through indiscriminate bombing of the population. When Japan started a war in Pearl Harbour, which is by the way pretty similar to what happened to us in terms of the shock, the US took off the gloves, and at a certain stage was not afraid to use the ultimate weapon, and it was the entire Japanese people, not the leadership, who paid the price…. This is a reality for us or them. Hamas is not a terror organisation, it is the representative of a State, the population of which supported and [still] supports Hamas, which is its authentic representative, and therefore this population is now suffering, and should suffer, a price that will make it change its mentality”

Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Nissim Vaturi MK (Likud, governing), 9 October: “Erase Gaza. Nothing else will satisfy us … Do not leave a child there[,] expel anyone who remains there when it ends, so that they won’t re-establish”

Unnamed IDF officer, 9 October: “This is not about surgical strikes and military infrastructure anymore … This means we will obliterate civilian infrastructure as well. Apartment buildings will be toppled. Hezbollah feeds off our apprehension to land a decisive strike, which means we will exhibit the exact opposite to avoid opening a northern front”

Energy Minister Israel Katz, 9 October: “I ordered to immediately cut off the water supply from Israel to Gaza. Electricity and fuel were cut off yesterday. What was will not be”

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, 9 October: “We are imposing a complete siege on the city of Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”¹⁷

Revital “Tally” Gotliv MK (Likud, governing), 9 October: “Jericho missile! Jericho missile! A strategic alert, before we consider introducing our forces. A doomsday weapon! This is my opinion”

Advisor to Defence Minister Gallant, former Head of the National Security Council and former IDF operations chief Giora Eil

 

 

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Palestine Tet – 30 – The Israeli Demolition of Gaza’s Shifa Hospital Complex

November 17, 2023
tags: ,

Gaza

(This article is taken from Rai Al Youm, Palestinian news source on November 16, 2023. Originally in Arabic, it was translated into English using Google Translate. RJP)

______________________

As of Wednesday evening, November 15, 2023. For 41 days, the Israeli army has been waging a devastating war on Gaza, leaving 11,500 martyrs, including 4,710 children and 3,160 women, in addition to 29,800 injured, 70 percent of whom are children and women, in addition to 197 martyrs in the West Bank and about 2,700 wounded, according to official Palestinian sources. Wednesday evening.

______________________

The Israeli army continues to search the Shifa complex in the Gaza Strip and destroy entire medical departments after failing to find any resistance bases there.

______________________

It is now 24 hours since Israel invaded al Shifa hospital. No sprawling Hamas command-and-control center. No arms caches in the tunnels. No secret passageways. Nothing except: DEAD BABIES IN INCUBATORS WITHOUT FUEL.

Norman Finkelstein

______________________

Gaza Strip (Palestinian Territories) – (AFP) – On Thursday, the Israeli army searched the Al-Shifa Hospital complex in the Gaza Strip, which consists of several buildings, “in a delicate operation,” while Hamas said that the army “destroyed” medical departments in the hospital.

Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, has become the focus of the military operation carried out by Israel. It says that Hamas is using the hospital as a command center, which the Islamic movement denies.

An Israeli army official announced on Thursday that video clips related to the hostages held by Hamas were found on computers in Al-Shifa Hospital. According to the official, the army is searching “every floor while hundreds of patients and medical staff remain in the complex.” He added, “During the inspection process, information and video footage related to the hostages kidnapped from Israel were found on computers, in addition to technological equipment.”

On Thursday evening (November 16, 2023), the army announced that the body of a woman kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri had been found. “Israeli army forces removed her from a building adjacent to Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip and transported to Israeli territory.”

Spokesman Daniel Hagari said, “Yehudit (Weiss) was killed by terrorists in the Gaza Strip, and we were not able to reach her in time.”

For his part, Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’s political bureau abroad, said in a televised speech, “Our people and their valiant resistance have thwarted the enemy’s goals and plans to displace or recover prisoners by force… He will not be able to achieve any of his goals or recover his prisoners except by paying the price determined by the resistance.”

A journalist cooperating with Agence France-Presse confirmed that “hundreds of soldiers stormed the hospital and surrounded all the buildings and prevented anyone from leaving… Bulldozers demolished the hospital’s southern walls and dozens of vehicles.”

The Hamas Ministry of Health, through its spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra, said in a statement: “The Israeli army stormed the hospital and destroyed many departments.” He destroyed the radiology department and bombed the burns and kidney department.” He pointed out that the Israeli forces are “investigating the doctors, the injured, and the displaced.”

The United Nations estimated the number of people in the hospital at about 2,300, including patients, employees and displaced people, who took shelter in the hospital before the army stormed it. According to Al-Qidra, “thousands of women, children, sick and injured are threatened with death from hunger and from Israeli bombing.”

Haniyeh stressed that the Israeli army “is waging a war on hospitals in Gaza in violation of all human norms, charters and values, the most recent of which was the brutal attack and is still ongoing on the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, based on the lies it fabricated and seeks to market, which have been proven false.”

Hamas launched an unprecedented attack in the history of the Hebrew state on Israeli territory on October 7. The attack left 1,200 dead, most of them civilians who died on the first day of the attack, according to the Israeli authorities. Also, Hamas kidnapped about 240 people, including foreigners, and transported them to the Gaza Strip, according to the same source.

Gaza

In response, Israel vowed to “eliminate” Hamas. Since then, it has been relentlessly bombing the Gaza Strip and imposing an “absolute siege” on it, and ground operations began as of October 27. The bombing led to the death of more than 11,500 people, most of them civilians and including thousands of children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.

Israel has essentially imposed a land, sea and air blockade on the Gaza Strip since Hamas took power there in 2007. The Israeli army announced on Thursday that the number of soldiers killed in battles with Hamas inside Gaza had risen to 51.

For its part, the Palestinian Red Crescent Ambulance Society confirmed that Israeli tanks were surrounding the Arab National Hospital (Al-Baptist) in Gaza amid a “violent attack” at a time when the Hebrew state insists that Hamas is using the health facilities as its bases.

The association said in a statement on its account on the X platform, “The Red Crescent ambulance crews are unable to move to reach the injured and wounded.”

– “Immediate possibility of starvation” –

Concerns are rising about the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip as Israel continues to cut off water, electricity, fuel and food supplies. The World Food Program warned Thursday that residents face “the immediate possibility of starvation” in the Gaza Strip, where “food and water supplies have become practically non-existent.”

The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced on Thursday that communications had been “completely cut off” again with the Gaza Strip. During a press conference in Geneva after he informed the member states of the United Nations about the situation in Gaza, Philippe Lazzarini said, “I believe that there is a deliberate attempt to stifle our operations and paralyze the operations of UNRWA.”

He added that “the Gaza Strip is once again suffering from a complete communications blackout… due to the lack of fuel.”

At the same time, the Palestinian Telecommunications Company “Paltel” said on its Facebook page, “We regret to announce a complete interruption of communications services (fixed, cellular, and Internet) in the Gaza Strip, after preventing the entry of fuel and exhausting all backup energy sources to operate the main network elements.”

The Israeli authorities consider fuel to be a high-risk dual-use product: civilian and military, and believe that it benefits Hamas.

Since the outbreak of fighting, limited shipments of food have entered through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Wednesday also recorded the entry of the first truck transporting fuel.

“We need fuel, fuel, fuel,” the UNRWA Commissioner-General stressed, adding that the longer the siege on Gaza lasts, the greater the threat that it will become “the main cause of death” in the Palestinian Strip.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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Palestine Tet – 29 – In tandem with President Biden and Madame Warmonger (Hillary Clinton) members of Colorado’s Congressional Delegation refuse to support an immediate ceasefire

November 16, 2023

 

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Before the end of the month, after 60 days without water, food, fuel, electricity or medicine, it’s likely that 100,000 Palestinians will have expired. Israelis have dropped over 15,000 deadly missiles on a crowded Gaza strip, striking babies, children, women, fathers, mothers… elderly, the infirm, diabetics, and people needing critical medicines and surgeries. As conditions of survival disappear under the F-16s and Israeli tanks, Palestinians will be dying by the minute. Hear that, Bomber Biden? –R

Ralph Nader

It’s not that the Biden Administration isn’t concerned that Palestinians are being killed like fish in a barrel in Gaza virtually none of whom have anything to do with Hamas guerillas, no, it’s not that. In fact many a member of the Administration might shed a tear, feel somewhat uneasy as the terms for Israel being increasingly mentioned “apartheid”, “occupation”, “genocide” take hold.

It’s simply that Washington will do whatever it needs to keep its key regional proxy afloat.  Even if the consequences means “Nakba 2” for Palestine., so be it. Strategic interests come first; human rights fall way behind, if all.

Rob Prince (for Front Range Jewish Voice for Peace)

___________________________

Over the years, other than a few big contributors to Congressional campaigns, those of us working for Middle East peace, for an end to the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian territories in Colorado have rarely been able to meet with members of Congress themselves either in person or on Zoom. Those among us with deeper pockets have more of an opportunity. The illusion of those “chosen” who have Congress people’s cell numbers, or who meet with them over dinner once a month, is that the $ buys them influence.

Might work occasionally but for most part it’s a bunch of b.s.

First these contributors are often shy about pushing certain controversial issues – like the current need to support ceasefire legislation – face to face with their congressional counterparts for fear of losing that magic word, “access”. Secondly the books on key foreign policy issues are mostly  cooked on such policies more often than not at “a higher level”.

For the run of the mill hoypoloi of which I am a proud member, it’s rare-to-never that one gets to meet with the members of Congress themselves. One is lucky to even get to meet with an local office head; more often than not it’s the lowest person on the Congressional office totem pole, who assiduously takes notes and promises to pass those on to his/her/their esteemed employer.

Still, I have to admit that it is not the waste of time my cynical above remarks suggest. Well placed pressure from below includes these meetings, phone calls, emails and letters to let members of Congress. It helps them judge just how much they can get away with before pulling back away from enthusiastically supporting the more egregious legislation (which is most of it).

While sometime they actually are sympathetic, most of the time, the best a member of Congress – faithful party-line member – can do is try their hardest to act as if they are listening sympathetically, hide behind a bevy of aides whose main job is to use the English language to obscure their employer’s position which more often than not they either don’t know at all (as is often the case with Middle East issues) or with which they are barely familiar.

That has what made this most recent round of visits to Colorado members of Congress unique. Representing Front Range Jewish Voice for Peace, I’ve been participating in meeting with Colorado members of Congress either in person or on Zoom, the meetings set up by the Colorado Palestine Club Lobbying Group. Two weeks ago it was U.S. Representative Jason Crow, yesterday with Yadira Caraveo. Later today a zoom with U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper, tomorrow with U.S. Representative Joe Neguse, the day after with Diana DeGette.

A pattern has emerged from the first two meetings that goes something like this: show sympathy for the humanitarian plight of Palestinians in Gaza while refusing any support for supporting a ceasefire. That of course translates into supporting Israel’s open ended campaign of ethnic cleansing, genocidal violence against the 2.2 million Palestinian people of Gaza. Read more…

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International Press Review – November 14, 2023

November 15, 2023

 

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Palestine Tet – 28 – 50+ Israel lies in 5 weeks

November 15, 2023

Gaza children after a bombing

From “Propaganda and co” @propandco
No 40 dead babies
No baked babies
No beheaded babies
No children in cages
No eyes gouged
No raped women
No ripped breasts
No paraded captives
No tortured captives
No mutilating dead bodies
No pregnant women cut open
No mass rapes with broken pelvises
No Israel did not found Shifa hospital
No Biden did not see pictures of dead babies
No October 7 was not “unprovoked”
No Pro-Palestine are not “pro-Hamas” rallies
No 8 yr old Emily Hand was not found dead
No “Global Day of Jihad”
No planned cyanide attacks
No all-female Israeli unit killing 100 Hamas
No Hamas coming thru US border
No Hamas headquarters under hospitals
No Hamas hostages in hospital basements
No Hamas tunnels under Rantisi hospital
No Hamas tunnels under Shaikh Hamad Hospital
No Hamas charter published in 2017 is anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish
No small blasts do not prove Israel did not bomb Baptist hospital
No “misfired” rocket was destroyed by Iron Dome before the Baptist hospital bombing
No “misfired” rocket can’t be both fired from cemetery and southwest of Baptist hospital No “misfired” rocket trajectory does not align with IDF version of events at Baptist hospital
Exposed crisis actor Eli Beer
Fake baby crib photo
Fake blood splatter photo
Fake booby-trapped school bags
Fake Al Jazeera journalist twitter account
Fake audio tapes released by IDF
Fake AI-generated images of Hamas leaders
Fake “official Al Qaeda material” on dead Hamas fighters
Fake antisemitism controversy over Greta’s toy octopus
Fake antisemitism allegations on Palestine campus activists
False grandstanding evacuation orders
False subtitles for Palestine protest chants
Fake Mein Kempf book in Gaza children living rooms
Fake ‘terrorist shift list’ by mistranslating an Arabic calendar
False labeled a Gaza 4-year-old toddler martyred in airstrike as a doll
False crisis actor accusation by using old pictures of West Bank raid survivor
False crisis actor accusation by using old pictures of Thai children in ghost costumes
False crisis actor accusation by using old pictures of Al-Azhar university students protesting
Yes, many Israeli civilians were killed by crossfire at festival
Yes, many Israeli civilians were killed by Israeli tanks/helicopters at kibbutz
Yes, many Israeli civilians said Hamas was kind to them during attacks and as captives
Yes, Israel exaggerated its death toll for October 7
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Palestine Tet – 27 – The Anti-Semitic Hustle

November 15, 2023
tags:
____________________________
@RalphNader
In a sane society, this self-victimization from Israel apologists would be unacceptable. Imagine the bigotry it must take to cheer the mass murder of Palestinians — massacred from every direction — and still make yourself the victim.
Aaron Mate
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Although it is an old canard, attacking (it is more than criticizing!) a person for criticizing Israel as “anti-Semitic” still works on many, pressuring them into silence. I’ve seen it so many times over the years – not dozens but hundreds of times – to be able to recognize its psychologically paralyzing effects.

To be labeled “anti-Semitic” even 75 years after the end of World War II suggests the worst kind of racism. The Black Alliance for Peace’s Ajamu Baraka calls it “this antisemitic hustle”. I agree, that’s all it is and all its ever been: an effective hustle that turns the oppressor-oppressed relationship on its head. Works like a charm. Well did work like a charm. It’s potency is slipping some as the world watches Israel – with U.S. funding, weapons and political support – blow Gaza to bits and ethnically cleanse yet another part of Palestine.

Yet many people here blame this shameless slaughter, incremental genocide some are calling it, on Hamas? There’s a name for these mental gymnastics; it’s called blaming the victim, and old and well-tried racist sport.

How it works

Like all hustles, this one is based upon a simple psychological approach. Zionists go on the ideological offensive in order to hide or deny the magnitude of their own racism, their own crimes. Rather than  defending what is indefensible, facing the consequences of the Naqba, the Occupation of the 1967 territories, and literal horrors they have entailed, all  substantiated by facts, by the historical record, the racists accuses the anti-racists of racism!

This mechanism or “hustle” thus defines the narrative and puts the Zionist critic on the defensive.

Those who accept the narrative, accused of racism, are thus forced to defend themselves. The controversy moves away from the crimes of Zionism – apartheid occupation, ethnic cleansing and, now, as the whole world can watch with horror in Gaza – genocide to whether or not a particular individual discriminates against Jews. To be so tainted is to be placed in the orbit of  right-wing racists, fascists of all stripes, those proud of hating Jews. .

The “critique-of-Israel-is-anti-Semitic” charge is magnified considerably by the fact that major Jewish organizations insist on another lie: that Judaism and Zionism are one. It  therefore follows that to criticize or attack Zionism is to attack Judaism itself, thus anti-Semitic. How can Zionism be different from Judaism if so many Jews see the two as fused into one?

The great p.r victory of Zionism and its supporters has been to conflate political Zionism with Judaism as if they are one and the same. The most virulent forms of hatred of Jews is overwhelmingly a European phenomenon. It has a long sordid history rooted in the major forms of Christianity be it Catholicism, Protestantism or the different Orthodox sects. The horrors inflicted on Jews (and others, Soviets, Poles) during World War II were perpetrated overwhelmingly by European racists – Nazis, Italian, Croatian, Hungarian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian Banderite fascists in the main.

One of the most cynical aspects of Zionism is the manner in which it transfers the anti-Semitism endemic of Europe onto the Palestinian and Arab peoples. In so doing, Zionism blinds its advocates of the history of crimes that they are committing and provides a pretext, an excuse for Israel to continue along the path of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Some historical considerations

Although anti-Semitism did raise its head in the countries where Sephardic Judaism predominated, it was never with the virulence, utter brutality and persistent longevity of the European Jewish experience. Starting in the 1880s or thereabouts, anti-Semitism exploded throughout Europe intensified by the transition to modern Capitalism, the Dreyfus Affair in France and the series of pogroms throughout the Russian Empire being among the two most prominent – but by no means the only – examples.

Jewish responses to their increasingly precarious and downright dangerous situation took a number of different forms, among them: assimilation which often entailed conversion to Christianity; migration to safer havens, including Western Europe and predominantly to the United States (as did all four of my grandparents); revolution – Jews were/are prominent in both socialist and communist movements and finally Zionism, the creation of a “Jewish State” in Palestine.

Until the end of World War Two, frankly, the Zionist option was not the “option of choice” of European Jewry. Immigration and left radicalization were far more appealing. Assimilation in Europe lost much of its appeal as Germany, a country in which Jewish assimilation was the most pronounced turned to Nazism. The immigration option ended as both the United States and Great Britain slammed the doors shut to Jewish (and other) immigrants after the punitive American Anti-Immigration Laws of 1924 limited southern and eastern European immigration to a trickle. It never recovered.

The vagaries of the Jewish radical experience – it is a mixed record but includes the repression of Jews both in the early years of post WW2 Poland along with Stalin’s anti-Jewish paranoia led to a souring of Jewish sentiment for a revolutionary Jewish option.

That left the Zionist option.

It might sound a little “off the wall” but to define Zionism as a voluntary form of the European ethnic cleansing of Jewry, but that is precisely what it was and remains. Hitler’s “solution” was extermination affected in the einsatzgruppen murders and death camps of Buchenwald, Auschwitz and frankly not dozens but hundreds of concentration camps. But the ethnic cleansing took “milder” and “more gentle” forms: expulsion, either forced or voluntary. Either ways, the Jewish presence was either reduced to next to naught, or completely eliminated.

Nor was it always that way. While the idea of “return to Zion” is a religious ideal that goes back centuries if not millenia, it was a spiritual longing of a people scattered hither and yon by the vagaries, the cruelties of history. Political Zionism is quite different, a form of narrow nationalism based on a racist assumption, that the Jews are “the chosen people”. Political Zionism is not “thousands of years old”. That is utter nonsense meant to suggest that the tensions between Arab and Jew is both historic and intractable.

It is a modern movement founded by Theodore Herzl and his circle at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20 century. The idea that political Zionism is as old as the hills is hogwash, nothing else as is the Zionist claim that ancient Israel was always a “Jewish state.” Zionism wasn’t the only political movement that unjustifyingly claimed ancient roots. The 1911Italian invasion of Libya, an example of rapacious, naked colonial aggression was done in the name of “re-establishing the Roman Empire”.

As Zionism did not have a national sponsor, it had to find one. Herzl was its salesman going to the imperialist/colonial nations of the day to find a sponsor for the Zionist project. While the quest ended with a British sponsor and the issuing of the Balfour Declaration, Herzl had previously lobbied the Ottoman Empire, Germany and France unsuccessfully beforehand. Point here: both the decades prior to its creation and certainly after that, Israel has always served one imperialist master or another: first Britain and since the June, 1967 War, the United States.

Separating anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism

People still don’t get it although it doesn’t like that hard a concept. Political Zionism as it exists in the history and current practices of the Israeli state and its supporters. It is a form of settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is based upon the displacement of an indigenous population by a foreign “settler” group, the latter inspired so the theory goes by some higher power, ie, “ordained by God”, “chosen people” “manifest destiny” and other self serving pretexts.

Settler colonialism took a number of forms. The South African Apartheid system, with which Zionism has many parallels. was one form. Another  was French Colonial rule in Algeria – an example not identical to but very close to Zionism. It should be carefully studied as the trajectory of Zionism resembles the fate of the French “colon” experience in many of its aspects. The settlement of the Americas, Australia and New Zealand all fall into the same general category (and all vociferously deny the fact).

The “Chosen” assumes an ethical, even “natural” or genetic superiority to others, the Unchosen”; such a formulation – whether conscious or not – divides people into categories of eugenically fit or unfit, racially superior and inferior. Thus by its very nature it is inherently racist.

Anti-Zionism essentially denies that the Jews (or any other people) are chosen, superior and understand both the concept and its manifestation in the state of Israel as fundamentally racist. Anti-Zionists a part of a global movement against all forms of racial discrimination.

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Palestine Tet – 26 – American military personnel all over the Middle East and in Gaza fighting “shoulder to shoulder” with IDF

November 14, 2023
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A military buuild up of huge proportions is taking place in the Middle East as reported earlier in this series.

As a part of that article, I posted about the growing attacks on U.S. bases throughout the Middle East and reports of  a concomitant growing number of American military casualties beginning to pile up in American military hospitals. The Biden Administration is doing its darndest to play down these casualty numbers, the Vietnam Syndrome still haunting Washington a half century later.

Will the response to Washington’s financial and military support for Israel be the destruction of its bases in Iraq and Syria?

A Colorado man was among those who died in a recent helicopter accident in the Middle East.  As reported on local Denver tv, Sergeant Cade Wolf was one of five who U.S. military personnel who died in a crash of a Blackhawk helicopter in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Yesterday the figure of missile and other attacks on those bases was reported to have reached 52 since October 17. There are also U.S. Special Forces members who are being held as prisoners supposedly in Gaza (unless they have been spirited away somewhere else, which is possible).

Today let’s explore the role of U.S. special forces fighting alongside the Israeli Defense Force in their rape of Gaza in the name, of course, of “self defense”.  The following piece is another Google Translation (they are not too bad) of another article from Rai Al Youm, the Palestinian online news source, this written by Nader Al-Safadi:

American Forces in Gaza fighting “shoulder to shoulder” with the Israeli Defense Force

Gaza – Exclusive to “Rai Al Youm” – Nader Al-Safadi. (November 14, 2023)

One of the Palestinian eyewitnesses revealed a huge surprise when he revealed to an Arab satellite channel that he had seen “with his own eyes” American forces penetrating into Gaza City, standing side by side with the Israeli forces that began their massive ground invasion of the Strip nearly two weeks ago.

Although the American administration repeatedly denies the presence of any “official” American forces fighting in Gaza, many reports published in Arab and international newspapers confirm the presence of special American forces fighting the Palestinian resistance and that they have suffered very heavy human losses.

A Palestinian eyewitness who was displaced from northern Gaza said that an American force was deployed in their area.

The young man stated in an interview with Al Jazeera that he spoke with the force that was surrounding their homes, and its soldiers were wearing the American flag on their military uniforms.

In the middle of last month, the New York Times, quoting a US Department of Defense official, said that the United States had sent a team of special operations forces to the occupied territories.

The New York Times quoted the official as saying that the team sent to Israel will assist with intelligence related to the hostages, noting that Washington has deployed aircraft in the region as a precautionary measure before any potential missions.

American officials have previously stated that the US Army is preparing to deploy 2,000 soldiers to help Israel, according to what the Wall Street Journal reported.

Following Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood,” the Pentagon announced the arrival of the American “Delta Force” forces to the occupied territories. These forces are specialized in carrying out certain tasks, and they had previously carried out an operation to target and kill the leaders of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Secret mission

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed that the United States has “people on the ground” who will assist the Israeli authorities with “intelligence and planning” for potential operations involving hostage rescue efforts, adding that “the Pentagon has a communications cell in Israel that works with Israeli special operations forces, as “The United States can quickly deploy other resources to the region.”

In a clear criticism of the statements, US Vice President Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, said that Washington has no plans to send forces to Israel or the Gaza Strip, and she explained in an interview with the “60 Minutes” program that Washington “has no intention or plans to send forces to Israel or Gaza.” .

She stressed that “the United States provides Israel with advice, equipment, and diplomatic support” in its war on the Gaza Strip.

“Israel, without a doubt, has the right to defend itself,” she said. However, it is very important that there is no equality between Hamas and the Palestinians. The Palestinians have a right to security, self-determination and dignity, and we have been very clear that the rules of war must be adhered to and humanitarian aid provided to them.”

Earlier, the American newspaper Military Watch, which specializes in military affairs, revealed the killing of a number of American special forces who participated in the ground attack on Gaza, and that their bodies had torn to pieces.

 

 

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Palestine Tet – 25 – Palestine Teach-In: Contexts, Voices, Affects. Tuesday, November 14, 2023. University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

November 13, 2023

In Colorado Springs, on Tuesday, November 14; I’ll be speaking for Jewish Voice for Peace

 

 

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Palestine Tet – 24 – Norman Finkelstein chastises Bernie Sanders for opposing a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza

November 13, 2023

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Normal Finkelstein responds to Bernie Sanders opposing Gaza ceasefire

I really never thought the day would come when I would join those excoriating Bernie Sanders… but it has come. Bernie is only a year or two older than I. We started life in the same neighborhood – Flatbush – in Brooklyn, both within blocks of Erasmus High School on Flatbush Ave. Politically at least, our life journeys have been similar. Both in 2016 and 2020 our family came out strong for him. No more.
His failure to come out in support of a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine is unforgivable.
And no one excoriates Bernie better than Norman Finkelstein. A shame – but time to get it out there … and then move on.
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Palestine Tet – 23 – Washington prepares for a wider war; Middle East close to regional explosion

November 12, 2023

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While the Biden Administration has insisted it won’t get into direct Middle East conflict on Israel’s behalf, it is doing just that. Anyone familiar with decades of U.S. foreign policy double talk knows that it is impossible to take that claim seriously.

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Concerning the possibility of achieving a ceasefire, of turning war escalation into peace escalation, Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah notes:

“The party that can stop this aggression is the one directing it, and that is the United States… The Americans have sent threats to put pressure on the resistance in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon using every possible channel to convey their messages. If the Americans want to stop such operations against them, then they have to stop the aggression on Gaza””

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John Mearsheimer – undoubtedly the most renowned International Relations scholar in the world today – on Gaza:
Israel is “waging a punishment campaign in Gaza, they are punishing the civilian population… The Israelis are interested in causing a huge amount of destruction in Gaza and in the process they are going to kill huge numbers of civilians… It seems to me that when you do that you’re committing war crimes. If the Israelis were going to great length to target just Hamas and avoid civilian casualties then you could make a coherent argument that this is not a case of them committing war crimes but they’re not doing that, they’re purposely tearing the place apart. This is a massive punishment campaign. Furthermore at the same time they’ve cut off all food, water and gas to Gaza and this means that in effect they’re going to end up starving out, or trying to starve out, the civilian population in Gaza. By my understanding of international law, this too is a war crime.”
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The repercussions of Israel’s war against the Palestinian people of Gaza is everywhere, including in Colorado.

A few days ago a group of 4 A-10 Warthog jets (described at the end of this article) flew low in the skies over my northwest Denver neighborhood heading north, destination unknown. Although I’ve seen jet fighters in the skies above Denver, rarely do U.S. warplanes fly so low over the city.

I called the EPA and complained about visual and noise pollution.

Today on Instagram, a fellow Coloradoan filmed a flatbed trainload of tanks, armed vehicles and the like passing through Denver on U.S. 85, a north-south road. And now peace activists working hard to pressure the Biden Administration to support an immediate cease-fire, are on the alert to see if similar trains are passing through.

The situation continues to deteriorate

Statistics gathered by the United Nations yesterday (November 10) reveal that nearly 11,000 Palestinians have died there, 75% of whom are women and children; 40,000 housing units destroyed and 1.5 million people already displaced. In the past 24 hrs, hospitals have been under relentless bombardment. Al-Shifa hospital has been hit multiple times. Hospitals there have run out of anesthetic, patients operated on without anesthetic.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest protest demonstrations in British history “Ceasefire Now!” in support of Palestinians in Gaza, is taking place in London despite government smears and threats. “Huge crowds” – 500,00 to 1,000,000 – were involved. In Yemen it is impossible to count the numbers demonstrating for Palestine, the same in Cape town, South Africa. In Brussels, 20,000 marched today.

It is elsewhere in the region I want to explore today, the tinderbox close to bursting into flame. Read more…

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