• ISIS claims responsibility for attack at Moscow-area concert venue that left at least 60 dead
    CNN — normal
    ISIS has claimed responsibility for an attack at a popular concert hall complex near Moscow Friday after assailants stormed the venue with guns and incendiary devices, killing at least 60 people and injuring 145.

    The terror group took responsibility for the attack in a short statement published by ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq on Telegram on Friday. It did not provide evidence to support the claim.

    Video footage from the Crocus City Hall shows the vast complex, which is home to both the music hall and a shopping center, on fire with smoke billowing into the air. State-run RIA Novosti reported the armed individuals “opened fire with automatic weapons” and “threw a grenade or an incendiary bomb, which started a fire.” They then “allegedly fled in a white Renault car,” the news agency said.

    State media Russia 24 reported the roof of the venue has partially collapsed.

    The fire had been brought largely under control more than six hours later. “There are still some pockets of fire, but the fire has been mostly eliminated,” Moscow governor Andrey Vorobyov said on Telegram.

    The deadliest terror attack on Moscow in decades, Friday’s assault came less than a week after President Vladimir Putin won a stage-managed election by an overwhelming majority to secure another term in office, tightening his grip on the country he has ruled since the turn of the century.

    With attention focused on the country’s war with neighboring Ukraine, Putin had trumpeted a message of national security before Russians went to the polls.

    The carnage broke out before a concert by the band Picnic, according to Russia 24.

    “Unidentified people in camouflage broke into Crocus City Hall and started shooting before the start of the concert,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said, cited by TASS.

    This screen grab from video shows armed men inside the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Moscow region, Russia. CNN can not verify whether these are the armed attackers or Russian authorities moving in.
    Video footage showed panic as the attack unfolded, with crowds of people huddling together, screaming and ducking behind cushioned seats as gunshots started echoing in the vast hall. One group sheltering next to a large wall of windows outside the concert venue were forced to break them to escape the gunfire, video obtained by CNN shows.

    Footage geolocated by CNN shows an armed individual starting at least one fire inside the venue. The individual is seen carrying something in their hand and, as they walk off-screen, a bright flash of light from a large flame is seen in the video.

    A SWAT team was called to the area and more than 70 ambulance teams and doctors assisted victims.

    One hundred and forty-five people have been hospitalized, TASS reported. Sixty people are in a “serious condition.”

    According to the Kremlin, Putin was informed about the attack and is being kept updated on measures on the ground.

    The president on Saturday wished those injured in the attack a speedy recovery, the state-run RIA-Novosti news agency said. He also “conveyed his gratitude to the doctors,” RIA added.

    Around 100 people were evacuated from the building by firefighters, TASS reported.

    Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the attack a “terrible tragedy.”

    “My condolences to the loved ones of the victims. I gave orders to provide all necessary assistance to everyone who suffered during the incident,” Sobyanin said in a statement.

    Sobyanin said on Telegram that he was canceling all sports, cultural and other public events in Moscow this weekend.

    Picnic’s manager told state media that the performers were unharmed.

    Shaman, the band’s singer, said he would pay for the funerals of the victims and treatment for those injured.

    “We are all one big family. And in a family there is no such thing as somebody else’s grief,” the singer, known for his nationalistic views, said in a video posted on the Russian social media network Vkontakte to his more than 600,000 followers.

    “My people, any troubles and misfortunes have always united our country. They have made Russia tougher and stronger. It will not be possible to frighten and break us this time either.”

    ISIS claims responsibility for Moscow attack that killed 40

    02:51 - Source: CNN
    US had warned of potential attack

    Earlier this month, the US embassy in Russia said it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow,” including concerts. The embassy warned US citizens to avoid large gatherings. On Friday, following reports of the Crocus City Hall attack, it advised US citizens not to travel to Russia.

    Starting in November, there has been a steady stream of intelligence that ISIS-K was determined to attack in Russia, according to two sources familiar with the information.

    ISIS-K stands for ISIS-Khorasan, the terror organization’s affiliate that is active in Afghanistan and the surrounding region.

    US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the US government had had information about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow – potentially targeting large gatherings, to include concerts – and that this is what prompted the State Department to issue the public advisory.

    “The US government also shared this information with Russian authorities in accordance with its longstanding ‘duty to warn’ policy,” Watson said.

    In a speech Tuesday, Putin had blasted the American warnings as “provocative,” saying “these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”

    In March alone, Russian authorities had thwarted several ISIS-related incidents, according to RIA. On March 3, RIA reported that six ISIS members were killed in a counter-terrorist operation in the Ingush Karabulak; on March 7, it said security services had uncovered and “neutralized” a cell of the banned organization Vilayat Khorasan in the Kaluga region, whose members were planning an attack on a synagogue in Moscow; and on March 20, it said the commander of an ISIS combat group had been detained.

    A US official said Friday that Washington had no reason to doubt ISIS’ claim that it was responsible for the latest attack.

    International response

    Ukraine, which has been embroiled in a war with Russia for more than two years, denied any involvement in the attack.

    “Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote, in part, in a post on X. He said he believed Russia would use the attack to justify the ongoing conflict and scale up operations as part of “military propaganda” in Ukraine.

    United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres late Friday condemned “in the strongest possible terms today’s terrorist attack” according to a statement released by his deputy spokesperson, Farhan Haq.

    “The secretary-general conveys his deep condolences to the bereaved families and the people and the government of the Russian Federation. He wishes those injured a speedy recovery,” the statement said.

    In a separate statement, the UN Security Council called the attack “heinous and cowardly.”

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping offered his condolences to Putin on Saturday “over the serious terrorist attack that caused heavy casualties,” according to a report from Chinese state media.

    French President Emmanuel Macron also condemned the attack. “France expresses its solidarity with the victims, their loved ones and all the Russian people,” the Elysee Palace said, AFP and Reuters reported.

    India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman both also denounced the attack.

    CNN’s Eva Rothenberg, Paul Murphy and Hannah Strange contributed to this reporting.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/22/europe/crocus-moscow-shooting/index.html
    ISIS claims responsibility for attack at Moscow-area concert venue that left at least 60 dead CNN — normal ISIS has claimed responsibility for an attack at a popular concert hall complex near Moscow Friday after assailants stormed the venue with guns and incendiary devices, killing at least 60 people and injuring 145. The terror group took responsibility for the attack in a short statement published by ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq on Telegram on Friday. It did not provide evidence to support the claim. Video footage from the Crocus City Hall shows the vast complex, which is home to both the music hall and a shopping center, on fire with smoke billowing into the air. State-run RIA Novosti reported the armed individuals “opened fire with automatic weapons” and “threw a grenade or an incendiary bomb, which started a fire.” They then “allegedly fled in a white Renault car,” the news agency said. State media Russia 24 reported the roof of the venue has partially collapsed. The fire had been brought largely under control more than six hours later. “There are still some pockets of fire, but the fire has been mostly eliminated,” Moscow governor Andrey Vorobyov said on Telegram. The deadliest terror attack on Moscow in decades, Friday’s assault came less than a week after President Vladimir Putin won a stage-managed election by an overwhelming majority to secure another term in office, tightening his grip on the country he has ruled since the turn of the century. With attention focused on the country’s war with neighboring Ukraine, Putin had trumpeted a message of national security before Russians went to the polls. The carnage broke out before a concert by the band Picnic, according to Russia 24. “Unidentified people in camouflage broke into Crocus City Hall and started shooting before the start of the concert,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said, cited by TASS. This screen grab from video shows armed men inside the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Moscow region, Russia. CNN can not verify whether these are the armed attackers or Russian authorities moving in. Video footage showed panic as the attack unfolded, with crowds of people huddling together, screaming and ducking behind cushioned seats as gunshots started echoing in the vast hall. One group sheltering next to a large wall of windows outside the concert venue were forced to break them to escape the gunfire, video obtained by CNN shows. Footage geolocated by CNN shows an armed individual starting at least one fire inside the venue. The individual is seen carrying something in their hand and, as they walk off-screen, a bright flash of light from a large flame is seen in the video. A SWAT team was called to the area and more than 70 ambulance teams and doctors assisted victims. One hundred and forty-five people have been hospitalized, TASS reported. Sixty people are in a “serious condition.” According to the Kremlin, Putin was informed about the attack and is being kept updated on measures on the ground. The president on Saturday wished those injured in the attack a speedy recovery, the state-run RIA-Novosti news agency said. He also “conveyed his gratitude to the doctors,” RIA added. Around 100 people were evacuated from the building by firefighters, TASS reported. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the attack a “terrible tragedy.” “My condolences to the loved ones of the victims. I gave orders to provide all necessary assistance to everyone who suffered during the incident,” Sobyanin said in a statement. Sobyanin said on Telegram that he was canceling all sports, cultural and other public events in Moscow this weekend. Picnic’s manager told state media that the performers were unharmed. Shaman, the band’s singer, said he would pay for the funerals of the victims and treatment for those injured. “We are all one big family. And in a family there is no such thing as somebody else’s grief,” the singer, known for his nationalistic views, said in a video posted on the Russian social media network Vkontakte to his more than 600,000 followers. “My people, any troubles and misfortunes have always united our country. They have made Russia tougher and stronger. It will not be possible to frighten and break us this time either.” ISIS claims responsibility for Moscow attack that killed 40 02:51 - Source: CNN US had warned of potential attack Earlier this month, the US embassy in Russia said it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow,” including concerts. The embassy warned US citizens to avoid large gatherings. On Friday, following reports of the Crocus City Hall attack, it advised US citizens not to travel to Russia. Starting in November, there has been a steady stream of intelligence that ISIS-K was determined to attack in Russia, according to two sources familiar with the information. ISIS-K stands for ISIS-Khorasan, the terror organization’s affiliate that is active in Afghanistan and the surrounding region. US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the US government had had information about a planned terrorist attack in Moscow – potentially targeting large gatherings, to include concerts – and that this is what prompted the State Department to issue the public advisory. “The US government also shared this information with Russian authorities in accordance with its longstanding ‘duty to warn’ policy,” Watson said. In a speech Tuesday, Putin had blasted the American warnings as “provocative,” saying “these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.” In March alone, Russian authorities had thwarted several ISIS-related incidents, according to RIA. On March 3, RIA reported that six ISIS members were killed in a counter-terrorist operation in the Ingush Karabulak; on March 7, it said security services had uncovered and “neutralized” a cell of the banned organization Vilayat Khorasan in the Kaluga region, whose members were planning an attack on a synagogue in Moscow; and on March 20, it said the commander of an ISIS combat group had been detained. A US official said Friday that Washington had no reason to doubt ISIS’ claim that it was responsible for the latest attack. International response Ukraine, which has been embroiled in a war with Russia for more than two years, denied any involvement in the attack. “Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote, in part, in a post on X. He said he believed Russia would use the attack to justify the ongoing conflict and scale up operations as part of “military propaganda” in Ukraine. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres late Friday condemned “in the strongest possible terms today’s terrorist attack” according to a statement released by his deputy spokesperson, Farhan Haq. “The secretary-general conveys his deep condolences to the bereaved families and the people and the government of the Russian Federation. He wishes those injured a speedy recovery,” the statement said. In a separate statement, the UN Security Council called the attack “heinous and cowardly.” Chinese leader Xi Jinping offered his condolences to Putin on Saturday “over the serious terrorist attack that caused heavy casualties,” according to a report from Chinese state media. French President Emmanuel Macron also condemned the attack. “France expresses its solidarity with the victims, their loved ones and all the Russian people,” the Elysee Palace said, AFP and Reuters reported. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman both also denounced the attack. CNN’s Eva Rothenberg, Paul Murphy and Hannah Strange contributed to this reporting. https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/22/europe/crocus-moscow-shooting/index.html
    WWW.CNN.COM
    ISIS claims responsibility for attack in busy Moscow-area concert venue that left at least 40 dead | CNN
    At least 40 people were killed and more than 100 were injured after armed attackers stormed a popular concert venue complex near Moscow and opened fire, according to preliminary information from the Federal Security Service in Russia, state media TASS reported.
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  • Scott Ritter: We are witnessing the bittersweet birth of a new Russia | VT Foreign Policy
    March 10, 2024
    VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel

    $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts
    Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.

    Tucker Carlson’s confused exasperation over Russian President Vladmir Putin’s extemporaneous history lesson at the start of their landmark February interview (which has been watched more than a billion times), underscored one realty. For a Western audience, the question of the historical bona fides of Russia’s claim of sovereign interest in territories located on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnieper River, currently claimed by Ukraine, is confusing to the point of incomprehension.

    Vladimir Putin, however, did not manufacture his history lesson from thin air. Anyone who has followed the speeches and writings of the Russian president over the years would have found his comments to Carlson quite familiar, echoing both in tone and content previous statements made concerning both the viability of the Ukrainian state from an historic perspective, and the historical ties between what Putin has called Novorossiya (New Russia) and the Russian nation.

    For example, on March 18, 2014, during his announcement regarding the annexation of Crimea, the president observed that “after the [Russian] Revolution [of 1917], for a number of reasons the Bolsheviks – let God judge them – added historical sections of the south of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine. This was done with no consideration for the ethnic composition of the population, and these regions today form the south-east of Ukraine.”

    Later during a televised question-and-answer session, Putin declared that “what was called Novorossiya back in tsarist days – Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Nikolayev and Odessa – were not part of Ukraine then. These territories were given to Ukraine in the 1920s by the Soviet Government. Why? Who knows? They were won by Potemkin and Catherine the Great in a series of well-known wars. The center of that territory was Novorossiysk, so the region is called Novorossiya. Russia lost these territories for various reasons, but the people remained.”

    Novorossiya isn’t just a construct of Vladimir Putin’s imagination, but rather a notion drawn from historic fact that resonated with the people who populated the territories it encompassed. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was an abortive effort by pro-Russia citizens of the new Ukrainian state to restore Novorossiya as an independent region.

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    While this effort failed, the concept of a greater Novorossiya confederation was revived in May 2014 by the newly proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. But this effort, too, was short-lived, being put on ice in 2015. This, however, did not mean the death of the idea of Novorossiya. On February 21, 2022, Putin delivered a lengthy address to the Russian nation on the eve of his decision to send Russian troops into Ukraine as part of what he termed a Special Military Operation. Those who watched Tucker Carlson’s February 9, 2024, interview with Putin would have been struck by the similarity between the two presentations.

    While he did not make a direct reference to Novorossiya, the president did outline fundamental historic and cultural linkages which serve as the foundation for any discussion about the viability and legitimacy of Novorossiya in the context of Russian-Ukrainian relations.

    “I would like to emphasize,” Putin said, “once again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space. It is our friends, our relatives, not only colleagues, friends, and former work colleagues, but also our relatives and close family members. Since the oldest times,” Putin continued, “the inhabitants of the south-western historical territories of ancient Russia have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. It was the same in the 17th century, when a part of these territories [i.e., Novorossiya] was reunited with the Russian state, and even after that.”

    The Russian president set forth his contention that the modern state of Ukraine was an invention of Vladimir Lenin, the founding father of the Soviet Union. “Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy,” Putin stated, “and can be rightfully called ‘Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine’. He was its creator and architect. This is fully and comprehensively corroborated by archival documents.”

    Putin went on to issue a threat which, when seen in the context of the present, proved ominously prescient. “And today the ’grateful progeny’ has overturned monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it decommunization. You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for Ukraine.”

    In September 2022 Putin followed through on this, ordering referendums in four territories (Kherson and Zaporozhye, and the newly independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics) to determine whether the populations residing there wished to join the Russian Federation. All four did so. Putin has since then referred to these new Russian territories as Novorossiya, perhaps nowhere more poignantly that in June 2023, when he praised the Russian soldiers “who fought and gave their lives to Novorossiya and for the unity of the Russian world.”

    The story of those who fought and gave their lives to Novorossiya is one that I have wanted to tell for some time now. I have borne witness here in the United States to the extremely one-sided coverage of the military aspects of Russia’s military operation. Like many of my fellow analysts, I had to undertake the extremely difficult task of trying to parse out fact from an overwhelmingly fictional narrative. Nor was I helped in any way in this regard by the Russian side, which was parsimonious in the release of information that reflected its side of reality.

    In preparing for my December 2023 visit to Russia, I had hoped to be able to visit the four new Russian territories to see for myself what the truth was when it came to the fighting between Russia and Ukraine. I also wanted to interview the Russian military and civilian leadership to get a broader perspective of the conflict. I had reached out to the Russian Foreign and Defense ministries through the Russian Embassy in the US, bending the ear of both the Ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, and the Defense Attache, Major-General Evgeny Bobkin, about my plans.

    While both men supported my project and wrote recommendations back to their respective ministries in this regard, the Russian Defense Ministry, which had the final say over what happened in the four new territories, vetoed the idea. This veto was not because they didn’t like the idea of me writing an in-depth analysis of the conflict from the Russian perspective, but rather that the project as I outlined it, which would have required sustained access to frontline units and personnel, was deemed too dangerous. In short, the Russian Defense Ministry did not relish the idea of me being killed on its watch.

    Under normal circumstances, I would have backed off. I had no desire to create any difficulty with the Russian government, and I was always cognizant of the reality that I was a guest in the country.

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    The last thing I wanted to be was a “war tourist,” where I put myself and others at risk for purely personal reasons. But I also felt strongly that if I were going to continue to provide so-called “expert analysis” about the military operation and the geopolitical realities of Novorossiya and Crimea, then I needed to see these places firsthand. I strongly believed that I had a professional obligation to see the new territories. Fortunately for me, Aleksandr Zyryanov, a Crimea native and director general of the Novosibirsk Region Development Corporation, agreed.

    It wasn’t going to be easy.

    We first tried to enter the new territories via Donetsk, driving west out of Rostov-on-Don. However, when we arrived at the checkpoint, we were told that the Ministry of Defense had not cleared us for entry. Not willing to take no for an answer, Aleksandr drove south, towards Krasnodar, and then – after making some phone calls – across the Crimean Bridge into Crimea. Once it became clear that we were planning on entering the new territories from Crimea, the Ministry of Defense yielded, granting permission for me to visit the four new Russian territories under one non-negotiable condition – I was not to go anywhere near the frontlines.

    We left Feodosia early on the morning of January 15, 2024. At Dzhankoy, in northern Crimea, we took highway 18 north toward the Tup-Dzhankoy Peninsula and the Chongar Strait, which separates the Sivash lagoon system that forms the border between Crimea and the mainland into eastern and western portions. It was here that Red Army forces, on the night of November 12, 1920, broke through the defenses of the White Army of General Wrangel, leading to the capture of the Crimean Peninsula by Soviet forces. And it was also here that the Russian Army, on February 24, 2022, crossed into the Kherson Region from Crimea.

    The Chongar Bridge is one of three highway crossings that connect Crimea with Kherson. It has been struck twice by Ukrainian forces seeking to disrupt Russian supply lines, once, in June 2023, when it was hit by British-made Storm Shadow missiles, and once again that August when it was hit by French-made SCALP missiles (a variant of the Storm Shadow.) In both instances, the bridge was temporarily shut down for repairs, evidence of which was clearly visible as we made our way across, and on to the Chongar checkpoint, where we were cleared by Russian soldiers for entry into the Kherson Region.

    At the checkpoint we picked up a vehicle carrying a bodyguard detachment from the reconnaissance company of the Sparta Battalion, a veteran military formation whose roots date back to the very beginning of the Donbass revolt against the Ukrainian nationalists who seized power in Kiev during the February 2014 Maidan coup. They would be our escort through the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions – even though we were going to give the frontlines a wide berth, Ukrainian “deep reconnaissance groups”, or DRGs, were known to target traffic along the M18 highway. Aleksandr was driving an armored Chevrolet Suburban, and the Sparta detachment had their own armored SUV. If we were to come under attack, our response would be to try and drive through the ambush. If that failed, then the Sparta boys would have to go to work.

    Our first destination was the city of Genichesk, a port city along the Sea of Azov. Genichesk is the capital of the Genichesk District of the Kherson Region and, since November 9, 2022, when Russian forces withdrew from the city of Kherson, it has served as the temporary capital of the region. Aleksandr had been on his phone since morning, and his efforts had paid off – I was scheduled to meet with Vladimir Saldo, the local Governor.

    RT

    Genichesk is – literally – off the beaten path. When we reached the town of Novoalekseyevka, we got off the M18 highway and headed east along a two-lane road that took us toward the Sea of Azov. There were armed checkpoints all along the route, but the Sparta bodyguards were able to get us waved through without any issues. But the effect of these checkpoints was chilling – there was no doubt that one was in a region at war.

    To call Genichesk a ghost town would be misleading – it is populated, and the evidence of civilian life is everywhere you look. The problem was, there didn’t seem to be enough people present. The city, like the region, is in a general state of decay, a holdover from the neglect it had suffered at the hands of a Ukrainian government that largely ignored territories that had, since 2004, voted in favor of the Party of Regions, the party of former President Viktor Yanukovich, who was ousted in the February 2014 Maidan coup. Nearly two years of war had likewise contributed to the atmosphere of societal neglect, an impression which was magnified by the weather – overcast, cold, with a light sleet blowing in off the water.

    As we made our way into the building where the government of the Kherson Region had established its temporary offices, I couldn’t help but notice a statue of Lenin in the courtyard. Ukrainian nationalists had taken it down in July 2015, but the citizens of Genichesk had reinstalled it in April 2022, once the Russians had taken control of the city. Given Putin’s feeling about the role Lenin played in creating Ukraine, I found both the presence of this monument, and the role of the Russian citizens of Genichesk in restoring it, curiously ironic.

    Vladimir Saldo is a man imbued with enthusiasm for his work. A civil engineer by profession, with a PhD in economics, Saldo had served in senior management positions in the “Khersonbud” Project and Construction Company before moving on into politics, serving on the Kherson City Council, the Kherson Regional Administration, and two terms as the mayor of the city of Kherson. Saldo, as a member of the Party of Regions, moved to the opposition and was effectively subjected to political ostracism in 2014, when the Ukrainian nationalists who had seized power all but forced it out of politics.

    Aleksandr and I had the pleasure of meeting with Saldo in his office in the government building in downtown Genichesk. We talked about a wide range of issues, including his own path from a Ukrainian construction specialist to his current position as the governor of Kherson Oblast.

    We talked about the war.

    But Saldo’s passion was the economy, and how he could help revive the civilian economy of Kherson in a manner that best served the interests of its diminished population. On the eve of the military operation, back in early 2022, the population of the Kherson Region stood at just over a million, of which some 280,000 were residing in the city of Kherson. By November 2022, following the withdrawal of Russian forces from the right bank of the Dnieper River – including the city of Kherson – the population of the region had fallen below 400,000 and, with dismal economic prospects, the numbers kept falling. Many of those who left were Ukrainians who did not want to live under Russian rule. But others were Russians and Ukrainians who felt that they had no future in the war-torn region, and as such sought their fortunes elsewhere in Russia.

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    “My job is to give the people of Kherson hope for a better future,” Saldo told me. “And the time for this to happen is now, not when the war ends.”

    Restoration of Kherson’s once vibrant agricultural sector is a top priority, and Saldo has personally taken the lead in signing agreements for the provision of Kherson produce to Moscow supermarkets. Saldo has also turned the region into a special economic zone, where potential investors and entrepreneurs can receive preferential loans and financial support, as well as organizational and legal assistance for businesses willing to open shop there.

    The man responsible for making this vision a reality is Mikhail Panchenko, the Director of the Kherson Region Industry Development Fund. I met Mikhail in a restaurant located across the street from the governmental building which Saldo called home. Mikhail had come to Kherson in the summer of 2022, leaving a prominent position in Moscow in the process. “The Russian government was interested in rebuilding Kherson,” Mikhail told me, “and established the Industry Development Fund as a way of attracting businesses to the region.” Mikhail, who was born in 1968, was too old to enlist in the military. “When the opportunity came to direct the Industry Development Fund, I jumped at it as a way to do my patriotic duty.”

    The first year of the fund’s operation saw Mikhail hand out 300 million rubles (almost $3.3 million at the current rate) in loans and grants (some of which was used to open the very restaurant where we were meeting.) The second year saw the allotment grow to some 700 million rubles. One of the biggest projects was the opening of a concrete production line capable of producing 60 cubic meters of concrete per hour. Mikhail took Alexander and me on a tour of the plant, which had grown to three production lines generating some 180 cubic meters of concrete an hour. Mikhail had just approved funding for an additional four production lines, for a total concrete production rate of 420 cubic meters per hour.

    “That’s a lot of concrete,” I remarked to Mikhail.

    “We are making good use of it,” he replied. “We are rebuilding schools, hospitals, and government buildings that had been neglected over the years. Revitalizing the basic infrastructure a society needs if it is to nurture a growing population.”

    The problem Mikhail faces, however, is that most of the population growth being experienced in Kherson today comes from the military. The war can’t last forever, Mikhail noted. “Someday the army will leave, and we will need civilians. Right now, the people who left are not returning, and we’re having a hard time attracting newcomers. But we will keep building in anticipation of a time when the population of the Kherson region will grow from an impetus other than war. And for that,” he said, a twinkle in his eye, “we need concrete!”

    I thought long and hard about the words of Vladimir Saldo and Panchenko as Aleksandr drove back onto the M18 highway, heading northeast, toward Donetsk. The reconstruction efforts being undertaken are impressive. But the number that kept coming to mind was the precipitous decline in the population – more than 60% of the pre-war population has left the Kherson region since the Russian military operation began.

    According to statistics provided by the Russian Central Election Commission, some 571,000 voters took part in the referendum on joining Russia that was held in late September 2022. A little over 497,000, or some 87%, voted in favor, while slightly more than 68,800, or 12%, voted against. The turnout was almost 77%.

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    These numbers, if accurate, implied that there was a population of over 740,000 eligible voters at the time of the election. While the loss of the city of Kherson in November 2022 could account for a significant source of the population drop that took place between September 2022 and the time of my visit in January 2024, it could not account for all of it.

    The Russian population of Kherson in 2022 stood at approximately 20%, or around 200,000. One can safely say that the number of Russians who fled west to Kiev following the start of the military operation amounts to a negligible figure. If one assumes that the Russian population of the Kherson Region remained relatively stable, then most of the population decline came from the Ukrainian population.

    While Saldo did not admit to such, the Governor of the neighboring Zaporozhya Region, Yevgeny Balitsky, has acknowledged that many Ukrainian families deemed by the authorities to be anti-Russian were deported following the initiation of the military operation (Russians accounted for a little more than 25% of the pre-conflict Zaporozhye population.) Many others fled to Russia to escape the deprivations of war.

    Evidence of the war was everywhere to be seen. While the conflict in Kherson has stabilized along a line defined by the Dnieper River, Zaporozhye is very much a frontline region. Indeed, the main direction of attack of the summer 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive was from the Zaporozhye region village of Rabotino, toward the town of Tokmak, and on towards the temporary regional capital of Melitopol (the city of Zaporozhye has remained under Ukrainian control throughout the conflict to date.)

    I had petitioned to visit the frontlines near Rabotino but had been denied by the Russian Ministry of Defense. So, too, was my request to visit units deployed in the vicinity of Tokmak – too close to the front. The closest I would get would be the city of Melitopol, the ultimate objective of the Ukrainian counterattack. We drove past fields filled with the concrete “dragon’s teeth” and antitank ditches that marked the final layer of defenses that constituted the “Surovikin Line,” named after the Russian General, Sergey Surovikin, who had commanded the forces when the defenses were put in place.

    The Ukrainians had hoped to reach the city of Melitopol in a matter of days once their attack began; they never breached the first line of defense situated to the southeast of Rabotino.

    Melitopol, however, is not immune to the horrors of war, with Ukrainian artillery and rockets targeting it often to disrupt Russian military logistics. I kept this in mind as we drove through the streets of the city, past military checkpoints, and roving patrols. I was struck by the fact that the civilians I saw were going about their business, seemingly oblivious to the everyday reality of war that existed around them.

    As was the case in Kherson, the entirety of the Zaporozhye Region seemed strangely depopulated, as if one were driving through the French capital of Paris in August, when half the city is away on vacation. I had hoped to be able to talk with Balitsky about the reduced population and other questions I had about life in the region during wartime, but this time Aleksandr’s phone could not produce the desired result – Balitsky was away from the region and unavailable.

    If he had been available, I would have asked him the same question I had put to Saldo earlier in the day: given that Putin was apparently willing to return the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions to Ukraine as part of the peace deal negotiated in March 2022, how does the population of his region feel about being part of Russia today? Are they convinced that Russia is, in fact, there to stay? Do they feel like they are a genuine part of the Novorossiya that Putin speaks about?

    Saldo had talked in depth about the transition from being occupied by Russian forces, which lasted until April-May 2022 (about the time that Ukraine backed out of the ceasefire agreement), to being administered by Moscow. “There never was a doubt in my mind, or anyone else’s, that Kherson was historically a part of Russia,” Saldo said, “or that, once Russian troops arrived, that we would forever be Russian again.”

    But the declining population, and the admission of forced deportations on the part of Balitsky, suggests that there was a significant part of the population that had, in fact, taken umbrage at such a future.

    I would have liked to hear what Balitsky had to say about this question.

    Reality, however, doesn’t deal with hypotheticals, and the present reality is that both Kherson and Zaporozhye are today part of the Russian Federation, and that both regions are populated by people who had made the decision to remain there as citizens of Russia. We will never know what the fate of these two territories would have been had the Ukrainian government honored the ceasefire agreement negotiated in March 2022. What we do know is that today both Kherson and Zaporozhye are part of the “New Territories” – Novorossiya.

    Russia will for some time find its acquisition of the “new territories” challenged by nations who question the legitimacy of Russia’s military occupation and subsequent absorption of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions into the Russian Federation. The reticence of foreigners to recognize these regions as being part of Russia, however, is the least of Russia’s problems. As was the case with Crimea, the Russian government will proceed irrespective of any international opposition.

    The real challenge facing Russia is to convince Russians that the new territories are as integral to the Russian motherland as Crimea, a region reabsorbed by Russia in 2014 which has seen its economic fortunes and its population grow over the past decade. The diminished demographics of Kherson and Zaporozhye represent a litmus test of sorts for the Russian government, and for the governments of both Kherson and Zaporozhye. If the populations of these regions cannot regenerate, then these regions will wither on the vine. If, however, these new Russian lands can be transformed into places where Russians can envision themselves raising families in an environment free from want and fear, then Novorossiya will flourish.

    Novorossiya is a reality, and the people who live there are citizens by choice more than circumstances. They are well served by men like Saldo and Balitsky, who are dedicated to the giant task of making these regions part of the Russian Motherland in actuality, not just in name.

    Behind Saldo and Balitsky are men like Panchenko, people who left an easy life in Moscow or some other Russian city to come to the “New Territories” not for the purpose of seeking their fortunes, but rather to improve the lives of the new Russian citizens of Novorossiya.



    For this to happen, Russia must emerge victorious in its struggle against the Ukrainian nationalists ensconced in Kiev, and their Western allies. Thanks to the sacrifices of the Russian military, this victory is in the process of being accomplished.

    Then the real test begins – turning Novorossiya into a place Russians will want to call home.


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    https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/03/scott-ritter-we-are-witnessing-the-bittersweet-birth-of-a-new-russia/


    https://telegra.ph/Scott-Ritter-We-are-witnessing-the-bittersweet-birth-of-a-new-Russia--VT-Foreign-Policy-03-11
    Scott Ritter: We are witnessing the bittersweet birth of a new Russia | VT Foreign Policy March 10, 2024 VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State. Tucker Carlson’s confused exasperation over Russian President Vladmir Putin’s extemporaneous history lesson at the start of their landmark February interview (which has been watched more than a billion times), underscored one realty. For a Western audience, the question of the historical bona fides of Russia’s claim of sovereign interest in territories located on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnieper River, currently claimed by Ukraine, is confusing to the point of incomprehension. Vladimir Putin, however, did not manufacture his history lesson from thin air. Anyone who has followed the speeches and writings of the Russian president over the years would have found his comments to Carlson quite familiar, echoing both in tone and content previous statements made concerning both the viability of the Ukrainian state from an historic perspective, and the historical ties between what Putin has called Novorossiya (New Russia) and the Russian nation. For example, on March 18, 2014, during his announcement regarding the annexation of Crimea, the president observed that “after the [Russian] Revolution [of 1917], for a number of reasons the Bolsheviks – let God judge them – added historical sections of the south of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine. This was done with no consideration for the ethnic composition of the population, and these regions today form the south-east of Ukraine.” Later during a televised question-and-answer session, Putin declared that “what was called Novorossiya back in tsarist days – Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Nikolayev and Odessa – were not part of Ukraine then. These territories were given to Ukraine in the 1920s by the Soviet Government. Why? Who knows? They were won by Potemkin and Catherine the Great in a series of well-known wars. The center of that territory was Novorossiysk, so the region is called Novorossiya. Russia lost these territories for various reasons, but the people remained.” Novorossiya isn’t just a construct of Vladimir Putin’s imagination, but rather a notion drawn from historic fact that resonated with the people who populated the territories it encompassed. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was an abortive effort by pro-Russia citizens of the new Ukrainian state to restore Novorossiya as an independent region. Scott Ritter: Helping Crimea recover from decades of Ukrainian misrule is a tough but necessary challenge Read more Scott Ritter: Helping Crimea recover from decades of Ukrainian misrule is a tough but necessary challenge While this effort failed, the concept of a greater Novorossiya confederation was revived in May 2014 by the newly proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. But this effort, too, was short-lived, being put on ice in 2015. This, however, did not mean the death of the idea of Novorossiya. On February 21, 2022, Putin delivered a lengthy address to the Russian nation on the eve of his decision to send Russian troops into Ukraine as part of what he termed a Special Military Operation. Those who watched Tucker Carlson’s February 9, 2024, interview with Putin would have been struck by the similarity between the two presentations. While he did not make a direct reference to Novorossiya, the president did outline fundamental historic and cultural linkages which serve as the foundation for any discussion about the viability and legitimacy of Novorossiya in the context of Russian-Ukrainian relations. “I would like to emphasize,” Putin said, “once again that Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space. It is our friends, our relatives, not only colleagues, friends, and former work colleagues, but also our relatives and close family members. Since the oldest times,” Putin continued, “the inhabitants of the south-western historical territories of ancient Russia have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. It was the same in the 17th century, when a part of these territories [i.e., Novorossiya] was reunited with the Russian state, and even after that.” The Russian president set forth his contention that the modern state of Ukraine was an invention of Vladimir Lenin, the founding father of the Soviet Union. “Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy,” Putin stated, “and can be rightfully called ‘Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine’. He was its creator and architect. This is fully and comprehensively corroborated by archival documents.” Putin went on to issue a threat which, when seen in the context of the present, proved ominously prescient. “And today the ’grateful progeny’ has overturned monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. They call it decommunization. You want decommunization? Very well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show what real decommunizations would mean for Ukraine.” In September 2022 Putin followed through on this, ordering referendums in four territories (Kherson and Zaporozhye, and the newly independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics) to determine whether the populations residing there wished to join the Russian Federation. All four did so. Putin has since then referred to these new Russian territories as Novorossiya, perhaps nowhere more poignantly that in June 2023, when he praised the Russian soldiers “who fought and gave their lives to Novorossiya and for the unity of the Russian world.” The story of those who fought and gave their lives to Novorossiya is one that I have wanted to tell for some time now. I have borne witness here in the United States to the extremely one-sided coverage of the military aspects of Russia’s military operation. Like many of my fellow analysts, I had to undertake the extremely difficult task of trying to parse out fact from an overwhelmingly fictional narrative. Nor was I helped in any way in this regard by the Russian side, which was parsimonious in the release of information that reflected its side of reality. In preparing for my December 2023 visit to Russia, I had hoped to be able to visit the four new Russian territories to see for myself what the truth was when it came to the fighting between Russia and Ukraine. I also wanted to interview the Russian military and civilian leadership to get a broader perspective of the conflict. I had reached out to the Russian Foreign and Defense ministries through the Russian Embassy in the US, bending the ear of both the Ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, and the Defense Attache, Major-General Evgeny Bobkin, about my plans. While both men supported my project and wrote recommendations back to their respective ministries in this regard, the Russian Defense Ministry, which had the final say over what happened in the four new territories, vetoed the idea. This veto was not because they didn’t like the idea of me writing an in-depth analysis of the conflict from the Russian perspective, but rather that the project as I outlined it, which would have required sustained access to frontline units and personnel, was deemed too dangerous. In short, the Russian Defense Ministry did not relish the idea of me being killed on its watch. Under normal circumstances, I would have backed off. I had no desire to create any difficulty with the Russian government, and I was always cognizant of the reality that I was a guest in the country. Western ‘expertise’ on the Ukraine conflict could lead the world to a nuclear disaster Read more Western ‘expertise’ on the Ukraine conflict could lead the world to a nuclear disaster The last thing I wanted to be was a “war tourist,” where I put myself and others at risk for purely personal reasons. But I also felt strongly that if I were going to continue to provide so-called “expert analysis” about the military operation and the geopolitical realities of Novorossiya and Crimea, then I needed to see these places firsthand. I strongly believed that I had a professional obligation to see the new territories. Fortunately for me, Aleksandr Zyryanov, a Crimea native and director general of the Novosibirsk Region Development Corporation, agreed. It wasn’t going to be easy. We first tried to enter the new territories via Donetsk, driving west out of Rostov-on-Don. However, when we arrived at the checkpoint, we were told that the Ministry of Defense had not cleared us for entry. Not willing to take no for an answer, Aleksandr drove south, towards Krasnodar, and then – after making some phone calls – across the Crimean Bridge into Crimea. Once it became clear that we were planning on entering the new territories from Crimea, the Ministry of Defense yielded, granting permission for me to visit the four new Russian territories under one non-negotiable condition – I was not to go anywhere near the frontlines. We left Feodosia early on the morning of January 15, 2024. At Dzhankoy, in northern Crimea, we took highway 18 north toward the Tup-Dzhankoy Peninsula and the Chongar Strait, which separates the Sivash lagoon system that forms the border between Crimea and the mainland into eastern and western portions. It was here that Red Army forces, on the night of November 12, 1920, broke through the defenses of the White Army of General Wrangel, leading to the capture of the Crimean Peninsula by Soviet forces. And it was also here that the Russian Army, on February 24, 2022, crossed into the Kherson Region from Crimea. The Chongar Bridge is one of three highway crossings that connect Crimea with Kherson. It has been struck twice by Ukrainian forces seeking to disrupt Russian supply lines, once, in June 2023, when it was hit by British-made Storm Shadow missiles, and once again that August when it was hit by French-made SCALP missiles (a variant of the Storm Shadow.) In both instances, the bridge was temporarily shut down for repairs, evidence of which was clearly visible as we made our way across, and on to the Chongar checkpoint, where we were cleared by Russian soldiers for entry into the Kherson Region. At the checkpoint we picked up a vehicle carrying a bodyguard detachment from the reconnaissance company of the Sparta Battalion, a veteran military formation whose roots date back to the very beginning of the Donbass revolt against the Ukrainian nationalists who seized power in Kiev during the February 2014 Maidan coup. They would be our escort through the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions – even though we were going to give the frontlines a wide berth, Ukrainian “deep reconnaissance groups”, or DRGs, were known to target traffic along the M18 highway. Aleksandr was driving an armored Chevrolet Suburban, and the Sparta detachment had their own armored SUV. If we were to come under attack, our response would be to try and drive through the ambush. If that failed, then the Sparta boys would have to go to work. Our first destination was the city of Genichesk, a port city along the Sea of Azov. Genichesk is the capital of the Genichesk District of the Kherson Region and, since November 9, 2022, when Russian forces withdrew from the city of Kherson, it has served as the temporary capital of the region. Aleksandr had been on his phone since morning, and his efforts had paid off – I was scheduled to meet with Vladimir Saldo, the local Governor. RT Genichesk is – literally – off the beaten path. When we reached the town of Novoalekseyevka, we got off the M18 highway and headed east along a two-lane road that took us toward the Sea of Azov. There were armed checkpoints all along the route, but the Sparta bodyguards were able to get us waved through without any issues. But the effect of these checkpoints was chilling – there was no doubt that one was in a region at war. To call Genichesk a ghost town would be misleading – it is populated, and the evidence of civilian life is everywhere you look. The problem was, there didn’t seem to be enough people present. The city, like the region, is in a general state of decay, a holdover from the neglect it had suffered at the hands of a Ukrainian government that largely ignored territories that had, since 2004, voted in favor of the Party of Regions, the party of former President Viktor Yanukovich, who was ousted in the February 2014 Maidan coup. Nearly two years of war had likewise contributed to the atmosphere of societal neglect, an impression which was magnified by the weather – overcast, cold, with a light sleet blowing in off the water. As we made our way into the building where the government of the Kherson Region had established its temporary offices, I couldn’t help but notice a statue of Lenin in the courtyard. Ukrainian nationalists had taken it down in July 2015, but the citizens of Genichesk had reinstalled it in April 2022, once the Russians had taken control of the city. Given Putin’s feeling about the role Lenin played in creating Ukraine, I found both the presence of this monument, and the role of the Russian citizens of Genichesk in restoring it, curiously ironic. Vladimir Saldo is a man imbued with enthusiasm for his work. A civil engineer by profession, with a PhD in economics, Saldo had served in senior management positions in the “Khersonbud” Project and Construction Company before moving on into politics, serving on the Kherson City Council, the Kherson Regional Administration, and two terms as the mayor of the city of Kherson. Saldo, as a member of the Party of Regions, moved to the opposition and was effectively subjected to political ostracism in 2014, when the Ukrainian nationalists who had seized power all but forced it out of politics. Aleksandr and I had the pleasure of meeting with Saldo in his office in the government building in downtown Genichesk. We talked about a wide range of issues, including his own path from a Ukrainian construction specialist to his current position as the governor of Kherson Oblast. We talked about the war. But Saldo’s passion was the economy, and how he could help revive the civilian economy of Kherson in a manner that best served the interests of its diminished population. On the eve of the military operation, back in early 2022, the population of the Kherson Region stood at just over a million, of which some 280,000 were residing in the city of Kherson. By November 2022, following the withdrawal of Russian forces from the right bank of the Dnieper River – including the city of Kherson – the population of the region had fallen below 400,000 and, with dismal economic prospects, the numbers kept falling. Many of those who left were Ukrainians who did not want to live under Russian rule. But others were Russians and Ukrainians who felt that they had no future in the war-torn region, and as such sought their fortunes elsewhere in Russia. Fyodor Lukyanov: How does the Russia-Ukraine conflict end? Read more Fyodor Lukyanov: How does the Russia-Ukraine conflict end? “My job is to give the people of Kherson hope for a better future,” Saldo told me. “And the time for this to happen is now, not when the war ends.” Restoration of Kherson’s once vibrant agricultural sector is a top priority, and Saldo has personally taken the lead in signing agreements for the provision of Kherson produce to Moscow supermarkets. Saldo has also turned the region into a special economic zone, where potential investors and entrepreneurs can receive preferential loans and financial support, as well as organizational and legal assistance for businesses willing to open shop there. The man responsible for making this vision a reality is Mikhail Panchenko, the Director of the Kherson Region Industry Development Fund. I met Mikhail in a restaurant located across the street from the governmental building which Saldo called home. Mikhail had come to Kherson in the summer of 2022, leaving a prominent position in Moscow in the process. “The Russian government was interested in rebuilding Kherson,” Mikhail told me, “and established the Industry Development Fund as a way of attracting businesses to the region.” Mikhail, who was born in 1968, was too old to enlist in the military. “When the opportunity came to direct the Industry Development Fund, I jumped at it as a way to do my patriotic duty.” The first year of the fund’s operation saw Mikhail hand out 300 million rubles (almost $3.3 million at the current rate) in loans and grants (some of which was used to open the very restaurant where we were meeting.) The second year saw the allotment grow to some 700 million rubles. One of the biggest projects was the opening of a concrete production line capable of producing 60 cubic meters of concrete per hour. Mikhail took Alexander and me on a tour of the plant, which had grown to three production lines generating some 180 cubic meters of concrete an hour. Mikhail had just approved funding for an additional four production lines, for a total concrete production rate of 420 cubic meters per hour. “That’s a lot of concrete,” I remarked to Mikhail. “We are making good use of it,” he replied. “We are rebuilding schools, hospitals, and government buildings that had been neglected over the years. Revitalizing the basic infrastructure a society needs if it is to nurture a growing population.” The problem Mikhail faces, however, is that most of the population growth being experienced in Kherson today comes from the military. The war can’t last forever, Mikhail noted. “Someday the army will leave, and we will need civilians. Right now, the people who left are not returning, and we’re having a hard time attracting newcomers. But we will keep building in anticipation of a time when the population of the Kherson region will grow from an impetus other than war. And for that,” he said, a twinkle in his eye, “we need concrete!” I thought long and hard about the words of Vladimir Saldo and Panchenko as Aleksandr drove back onto the M18 highway, heading northeast, toward Donetsk. The reconstruction efforts being undertaken are impressive. But the number that kept coming to mind was the precipitous decline in the population – more than 60% of the pre-war population has left the Kherson region since the Russian military operation began. According to statistics provided by the Russian Central Election Commission, some 571,000 voters took part in the referendum on joining Russia that was held in late September 2022. A little over 497,000, or some 87%, voted in favor, while slightly more than 68,800, or 12%, voted against. The turnout was almost 77%. Sergey Poletaev: As the second anniversary of the Russia–Ukraine conflict approaches, who has the upper hand? Read more Sergey Poletaev: As the second anniversary of the Russia–Ukraine conflict approaches, who has the upper hand? These numbers, if accurate, implied that there was a population of over 740,000 eligible voters at the time of the election. While the loss of the city of Kherson in November 2022 could account for a significant source of the population drop that took place between September 2022 and the time of my visit in January 2024, it could not account for all of it. The Russian population of Kherson in 2022 stood at approximately 20%, or around 200,000. One can safely say that the number of Russians who fled west to Kiev following the start of the military operation amounts to a negligible figure. If one assumes that the Russian population of the Kherson Region remained relatively stable, then most of the population decline came from the Ukrainian population. While Saldo did not admit to such, the Governor of the neighboring Zaporozhya Region, Yevgeny Balitsky, has acknowledged that many Ukrainian families deemed by the authorities to be anti-Russian were deported following the initiation of the military operation (Russians accounted for a little more than 25% of the pre-conflict Zaporozhye population.) Many others fled to Russia to escape the deprivations of war. Evidence of the war was everywhere to be seen. While the conflict in Kherson has stabilized along a line defined by the Dnieper River, Zaporozhye is very much a frontline region. Indeed, the main direction of attack of the summer 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive was from the Zaporozhye region village of Rabotino, toward the town of Tokmak, and on towards the temporary regional capital of Melitopol (the city of Zaporozhye has remained under Ukrainian control throughout the conflict to date.) I had petitioned to visit the frontlines near Rabotino but had been denied by the Russian Ministry of Defense. So, too, was my request to visit units deployed in the vicinity of Tokmak – too close to the front. The closest I would get would be the city of Melitopol, the ultimate objective of the Ukrainian counterattack. We drove past fields filled with the concrete “dragon’s teeth” and antitank ditches that marked the final layer of defenses that constituted the “Surovikin Line,” named after the Russian General, Sergey Surovikin, who had commanded the forces when the defenses were put in place. The Ukrainians had hoped to reach the city of Melitopol in a matter of days once their attack began; they never breached the first line of defense situated to the southeast of Rabotino. Melitopol, however, is not immune to the horrors of war, with Ukrainian artillery and rockets targeting it often to disrupt Russian military logistics. I kept this in mind as we drove through the streets of the city, past military checkpoints, and roving patrols. I was struck by the fact that the civilians I saw were going about their business, seemingly oblivious to the everyday reality of war that existed around them. As was the case in Kherson, the entirety of the Zaporozhye Region seemed strangely depopulated, as if one were driving through the French capital of Paris in August, when half the city is away on vacation. I had hoped to be able to talk with Balitsky about the reduced population and other questions I had about life in the region during wartime, but this time Aleksandr’s phone could not produce the desired result – Balitsky was away from the region and unavailable. If he had been available, I would have asked him the same question I had put to Saldo earlier in the day: given that Putin was apparently willing to return the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions to Ukraine as part of the peace deal negotiated in March 2022, how does the population of his region feel about being part of Russia today? Are they convinced that Russia is, in fact, there to stay? Do they feel like they are a genuine part of the Novorossiya that Putin speaks about? Saldo had talked in depth about the transition from being occupied by Russian forces, which lasted until April-May 2022 (about the time that Ukraine backed out of the ceasefire agreement), to being administered by Moscow. “There never was a doubt in my mind, or anyone else’s, that Kherson was historically a part of Russia,” Saldo said, “or that, once Russian troops arrived, that we would forever be Russian again.” But the declining population, and the admission of forced deportations on the part of Balitsky, suggests that there was a significant part of the population that had, in fact, taken umbrage at such a future. I would have liked to hear what Balitsky had to say about this question. Reality, however, doesn’t deal with hypotheticals, and the present reality is that both Kherson and Zaporozhye are today part of the Russian Federation, and that both regions are populated by people who had made the decision to remain there as citizens of Russia. We will never know what the fate of these two territories would have been had the Ukrainian government honored the ceasefire agreement negotiated in March 2022. What we do know is that today both Kherson and Zaporozhye are part of the “New Territories” – Novorossiya. Russia will for some time find its acquisition of the “new territories” challenged by nations who question the legitimacy of Russia’s military occupation and subsequent absorption of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions into the Russian Federation. The reticence of foreigners to recognize these regions as being part of Russia, however, is the least of Russia’s problems. As was the case with Crimea, the Russian government will proceed irrespective of any international opposition. The real challenge facing Russia is to convince Russians that the new territories are as integral to the Russian motherland as Crimea, a region reabsorbed by Russia in 2014 which has seen its economic fortunes and its population grow over the past decade. The diminished demographics of Kherson and Zaporozhye represent a litmus test of sorts for the Russian government, and for the governments of both Kherson and Zaporozhye. If the populations of these regions cannot regenerate, then these regions will wither on the vine. If, however, these new Russian lands can be transformed into places where Russians can envision themselves raising families in an environment free from want and fear, then Novorossiya will flourish. Novorossiya is a reality, and the people who live there are citizens by choice more than circumstances. They are well served by men like Saldo and Balitsky, who are dedicated to the giant task of making these regions part of the Russian Motherland in actuality, not just in name. Behind Saldo and Balitsky are men like Panchenko, people who left an easy life in Moscow or some other Russian city to come to the “New Territories” not for the purpose of seeking their fortunes, but rather to improve the lives of the new Russian citizens of Novorossiya. For this to happen, Russia must emerge victorious in its struggle against the Ukrainian nationalists ensconced in Kiev, and their Western allies. Thanks to the sacrifices of the Russian military, this victory is in the process of being accomplished. Then the real test begins – turning Novorossiya into a place Russians will want to call home. ATTENTION READERS We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion. About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT. https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/03/scott-ritter-we-are-witnessing-the-bittersweet-birth-of-a-new-russia/ https://telegra.ph/Scott-Ritter-We-are-witnessing-the-bittersweet-birth-of-a-new-Russia--VT-Foreign-Policy-03-11
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    Scott Ritter: We are witnessing the bittersweet birth of a new Russia
    Building Novorossiya back up after Ukrainian neglect and war is a monumental but unavoidable task
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  • America's COVID Response Was Based on Lies
    Almost all of America's leaders have gradually pulled back their COVID mandates, requirements, and closures—even in states like California, which had imposed the most stringent and longest-lasting restrictions on the public. At the same time, the media has been gradually acknowledging the ongoing release of studies that totally refute the purported reasons behind those restrictions. This overt reversal is falsely portrayed as "learned" or "new evidence." Little acknowledgement of error is to be found. We have seen no public apology for promulgating false information, or for the vilification and delegitimization of policy experts and medical scientists like myself who spoke out correctly about data, standard knowledge about viral infections and pandemics, and fundamental biology.

    The historical record is critical. We have seen a macabre Orwellian attempt to rewrite history and to blame the failure of widespread lockdowns on the lockdowns' critics, alongside absurd denials of officials' own incessant demands for them. In the Trump administration, Dr. Deborah Birx was formally in charge of the medical side of the White House's coronavirus task force during the pandemic's first year. In that capacity, she authored all written federal policy recommendations to governors and states and personally advised each state's public health officials during official visits, often with Vice President Mike Pence, who oversaw the entire task force. Upon the inauguration of President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci became chief medical advisor and ran the Biden pandemic response.

    We must acknowledge the abject failure of the Birx-Fauci policies. They were enacted, but they failed to stop the dying, failed to stop the infection from spreading, and inflicted massive damage and destruction particularly on lower-income families and on America's children.

    More than 1 million American deaths have been attributed to that virus. Even after draconian measures, including school closures, stoppage of non-COVID medical care, business shutdowns, personal restrictions, and then the continuation of many restrictions and mandates in the presence of a vaccine, there was an undeniable failure—over two presidential administrations—to stop cases from rapidly escalating.

    Numerous experts—including John Ioannidis, David Katz, and myself—called for targeted protection, a safer alternative to widespread lockdowns, in national media beginning in March of 2020. That proposal was rejected. History's biggest public health policy failure came at the hands of those who recommended the lockdowns and those who implemented them, not those who advised otherwise.

    White House COVID task force
    WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 09: White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx speaks as (L-R) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia... Alex Wong/Getty Images
    Your daily briefing of everything you need to know

    The tragic failure of reckless, unprecedented lockdowns that were contrary to established pandemic science, and the added massive harms of those policies on children, the elderly, and lower-income families, are indisputable and well-documented in numerous studies. This was the biggest, the most tragic, and the most unethical breakdown of public health leadership in modern history.

    In a democracy, indeed in any ethical and free society, the truth is essential. The American people need to hear the truth—the facts, free from the political distortions, misrepresentations, and censorship. The first step is to clearly state the harsh truth in the starkest possible terms. Lies were told. Those lies harmed the public. Those lies were directly contrary to the evidence, to decades of knowledge on viral pandemics, and to long-established fundamental biology.

    Here are the 10 biggest falsehoods—known for years to be false, not recently learned or proven to be so—promoted by America's public health leaders, elected and unelected officials, and now-discredited academics:

    1. SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has a far higher fatality rate than the flu by several orders of magnitude.

    2. Everyone is at significant risk to die from this virus.

    3. No one has any immunological protection, because this virus is completely new.

    4. Asymptomatic people are major drivers of the spread.

    5. Locking down—closing schools and businesses, confining people to their homes, stopping non-COVID medical care, and eliminating travel—will stop or eliminate the virus.

    6. Masks will protect everyone and stop the spread.

    7. The virus is known to be naturally occurring, and claiming it originated in a lab is a conspiracy theory.

    8. Teachers are at especially high risk.

    9. COVID vaccines stop the spread of the infection.

    10. Immune protection only comes from a vaccine.

    None of us are so naïve as to expect a direct apology from critics at my employer, Stanford University, or in government, academic public health, and the media. But to ensure that this never happens again, government leaders, power-driven officials, and influential academics and advisors often harboring conflicts of interest must be held accountable. Personally, I remain highly skeptical that any government investigation or commission can avoid politicization. Regardless of their intention, all such government-run inquiries will at least be perceived as politically motivated and their conclusions will be rejected outright by many. Those investigations must proceed, though, if only to seek the truth, to teach our children that truth matters, and to remember G.K. Chesterton's critical lesson that "Right is right, even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong about it."

    Scott W. Atlas, MD is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Co-Director of the Global Liberty Institute, Founding Fellow of Hillsdale's Academy for Science & Freedom, and author of A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America (Bombardier Press, 2022).

    The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

    Read more
    How Fauci Fooled America
    Untangling America from the Never-Ending COVID 'State of Emergency'
    We Need a COVID Commission

    https://www.newsweek.com/america-covid-response-was-based-lies-opinion-1785177


    https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2024/01/americas-covid-response-was-based-on.html
    America's COVID Response Was Based on Lies Almost all of America's leaders have gradually pulled back their COVID mandates, requirements, and closures—even in states like California, which had imposed the most stringent and longest-lasting restrictions on the public. At the same time, the media has been gradually acknowledging the ongoing release of studies that totally refute the purported reasons behind those restrictions. This overt reversal is falsely portrayed as "learned" or "new evidence." Little acknowledgement of error is to be found. We have seen no public apology for promulgating false information, or for the vilification and delegitimization of policy experts and medical scientists like myself who spoke out correctly about data, standard knowledge about viral infections and pandemics, and fundamental biology. The historical record is critical. We have seen a macabre Orwellian attempt to rewrite history and to blame the failure of widespread lockdowns on the lockdowns' critics, alongside absurd denials of officials' own incessant demands for them. In the Trump administration, Dr. Deborah Birx was formally in charge of the medical side of the White House's coronavirus task force during the pandemic's first year. In that capacity, she authored all written federal policy recommendations to governors and states and personally advised each state's public health officials during official visits, often with Vice President Mike Pence, who oversaw the entire task force. Upon the inauguration of President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci became chief medical advisor and ran the Biden pandemic response. We must acknowledge the abject failure of the Birx-Fauci policies. They were enacted, but they failed to stop the dying, failed to stop the infection from spreading, and inflicted massive damage and destruction particularly on lower-income families and on America's children. More than 1 million American deaths have been attributed to that virus. Even after draconian measures, including school closures, stoppage of non-COVID medical care, business shutdowns, personal restrictions, and then the continuation of many restrictions and mandates in the presence of a vaccine, there was an undeniable failure—over two presidential administrations—to stop cases from rapidly escalating. Numerous experts—including John Ioannidis, David Katz, and myself—called for targeted protection, a safer alternative to widespread lockdowns, in national media beginning in March of 2020. That proposal was rejected. History's biggest public health policy failure came at the hands of those who recommended the lockdowns and those who implemented them, not those who advised otherwise. White House COVID task force WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 09: White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx speaks as (L-R) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia... Alex Wong/Getty Images Your daily briefing of everything you need to know The tragic failure of reckless, unprecedented lockdowns that were contrary to established pandemic science, and the added massive harms of those policies on children, the elderly, and lower-income families, are indisputable and well-documented in numerous studies. This was the biggest, the most tragic, and the most unethical breakdown of public health leadership in modern history. In a democracy, indeed in any ethical and free society, the truth is essential. The American people need to hear the truth—the facts, free from the political distortions, misrepresentations, and censorship. The first step is to clearly state the harsh truth in the starkest possible terms. Lies were told. Those lies harmed the public. Those lies were directly contrary to the evidence, to decades of knowledge on viral pandemics, and to long-established fundamental biology. Here are the 10 biggest falsehoods—known for years to be false, not recently learned or proven to be so—promoted by America's public health leaders, elected and unelected officials, and now-discredited academics: 1. SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has a far higher fatality rate than the flu by several orders of magnitude. 2. Everyone is at significant risk to die from this virus. 3. No one has any immunological protection, because this virus is completely new. 4. Asymptomatic people are major drivers of the spread. 5. Locking down—closing schools and businesses, confining people to their homes, stopping non-COVID medical care, and eliminating travel—will stop or eliminate the virus. 6. Masks will protect everyone and stop the spread. 7. The virus is known to be naturally occurring, and claiming it originated in a lab is a conspiracy theory. 8. Teachers are at especially high risk. 9. COVID vaccines stop the spread of the infection. 10. Immune protection only comes from a vaccine. None of us are so naïve as to expect a direct apology from critics at my employer, Stanford University, or in government, academic public health, and the media. But to ensure that this never happens again, government leaders, power-driven officials, and influential academics and advisors often harboring conflicts of interest must be held accountable. Personally, I remain highly skeptical that any government investigation or commission can avoid politicization. Regardless of their intention, all such government-run inquiries will at least be perceived as politically motivated and their conclusions will be rejected outright by many. Those investigations must proceed, though, if only to seek the truth, to teach our children that truth matters, and to remember G.K. Chesterton's critical lesson that "Right is right, even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong about it." Scott W. Atlas, MD is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Co-Director of the Global Liberty Institute, Founding Fellow of Hillsdale's Academy for Science & Freedom, and author of A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America (Bombardier Press, 2022). The views expressed in this article are the writer's own. Read more How Fauci Fooled America Untangling America from the Never-Ending COVID 'State of Emergency' We Need a COVID Commission https://www.newsweek.com/america-covid-response-was-based-lies-opinion-1785177 https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2024/01/americas-covid-response-was-based-on.html
    WWW.NEWSWEEK.COM
    America's COVID Response Was Based on Lies
    We have seen an Orwellian attempt to rewrite history and to blame the failure of widespread lockdowns on the lockdowns' critics.
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  • Many Say They Want Peace When What They Really Want Is Obedience: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
    Caitlin JohnstoneWednesday 24 Jan 24
    Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):



    Everyone says they want peace, but they mean different things by this. To an anti-imperialist, peace means the end of violence, oppression and exploitation. To a Zionist, peace means Palestinians lie down and accept their fate and neighboring nations cease disobeying Israel. To a supporter of the US empire, peace means all nations around the world submit to US unipolar hegemony. Many say they want peace when what they really want is tyranny.

    If “peace” to you means other populations bow down and submit to your will, then it makes perfect sense for you to believe that your wars are being waged to attain peace, because those wars are being used to violently bludgeon those populations into obedience. If your definition of peace means the cessation of all violence and abuse, then you will support ceasefires, peace negotiations, diplomacy, the de-escalation of tensions, the cessation of imperialist extraction, and the end of apartheid and injustice.

    Pay less attention to people’s words about wanting “peace” and focus instead on what actions they are supporting to accomplish that end. This will show you the truth about what they really want.




    https://x.com/caitoz/status/1748455323126632957?s=20


    Someone asked “Can we all agree that our world would be better without a Hamas?”

    This is the sort of question that can only make sense to you if you view Hamas as some kind of invasive alien presence that was imposed upon Palestine from the outside instead of a natural emergence from the material circumstances that have been forced upon Palestinians. If you’ve got a group of people being sufficiently oppressed and violently persecuted by the ruling power, you’re going to start seeing violent opposition to that ruling power as sure as you’ll see blood arise from a wound.

    If Hamas had been completely eliminated a decade ago, there would be a Palestinian group organizing violence against the state of Israel today under that or some other name. If Hamas is completely eliminated tomorrow, there will be a Palestinian group organizing violence against the state of Israel in a matter of years (assuming there are any Palestinians left when this is all over, of course). If a man starts strangling me, at some point I’m going to try to gouge his eyes and crush his testicles. That’s just what happens when humans find themselves under a sufficient amount of existential pressure.

    Asking if the world would be better without Hamas is as nonsensical as asking if Alaska would be better without coats. The presence of coats in Alaska is the natural consequence of the material conditions in that region, and as long as those material conditions persist for the population of Alaska then there will necessarily be coats.

    Don’t ask if the world would be better without a Hamas, ask if the world would be better without the conditions which make a Hamas inevitable.



    Biden has started a new US war in Yemen while backing a genocide in Gaza, both of which are fully supported by the party which supposedly opposes him. But by all means go ahead and spend the rest of the year fixating on the US presidential race.



    Know how you can tell it no longer matters who the US president is? They stopped getting assassinated.



    The Biden administration’s justifications for its acts of war in Yemen are premised on the absurd assumption that the world economy should march on completely uninhibited during an active genocide.



    Supporting the world’s most powerful government bombing the poorest country in the middle east for trying to stop a genocide is the most sycophantic bootlicking you can possibly cram into a single political opinion.




    https://x.com/caitoz/status/1748478825602953304?s=20


    Israel isn’t relentlessly murderous and abusive because it’s run by Jews, it’s relentlessly murderous and abusive because that’s the only way to maintain an ethnostate that was abruptly dropped on top of an already existing civilization. This would be true if it’d been a Mormon state or a Romani state.

    Take any already existing country with its own ethnic and religious makeup and its own relationships with surrounding countries and drop a brand new artificial ethnostate on top of it with a deluge of immigrants who are designated special and above the people in that region, and you’re going to get a ton of violence. You’re also going to see the dominant group espouse supremacist ideological beliefs to justify why it’s fine for them to be placed above the other group and receive better treatment by the state. These things would happen regardless of what those respective ethnic and religious makeups happen to be.

    How can we be sure of this? Because we’ve seen it happen time and time again in other settler-colonialist projects throughout history which had nothing to do with Jews or Muslims.

    It’s not about Jews and Judaism, it’s about the nature and character of the ethnostate which got placed overtop a pre-existing civilization in the 1940s. The religions and ethnicities are interchangeable with pretty much any other in terms of how much violence would be necessary to institute and maintain such a state.



    People who say they oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza but don’t forcefully oppose Biden’s facilitation of Israel’s actions in Gaza do not actually oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza.



    There’s a type of uninformed comment I keep seeing, usually from Americans, that goes something like this: “What do I care about Israel and Hamas? It’s none of our business and we should stay out of it.”

    This comment is born of the misunderstanding that people want the US to meddle in middle eastern affairs to stop the slaughter in Gaza, which is a notion many Americans reflexively oppose these days because they have learned that US “humanitarian interventions” in that region are consistently disastrous and often very costly.

    But that isn’t what’s being called for. What’s being called for is for the US to STOP intervening in Israel and Gaza — to END an intervention that is ALREADY taking place. The US has been pouring billions of dollars of weaponry into Israel every year for many years now, and has sent a whole lot more since October 7 to assist the Israeli butchery that’s been happening in Gaza. If the US ceased supporting Israel’s violence in Gaza, that violence would necessarily be forced to end.

    As a retired Israeli major general named Yitzhak Brick told the Jewish News Syndicate in November, “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

    If you don’t want your government engaging in foreign conflicts and intervening in foreign affairs, then you should oppose the US-backed massacres in Gaza, because that’s exactly what it is. The anti-interventionist position for an American to have is to demand that the Biden administration stop actively facilitating this mass atrocity.

    https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/many-say-they-want-peace-when-what
    Many Say They Want Peace When What They Really Want Is Obedience: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix Caitlin JohnstoneWednesday 24 Jan 24 Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): Everyone says they want peace, but they mean different things by this. To an anti-imperialist, peace means the end of violence, oppression and exploitation. To a Zionist, peace means Palestinians lie down and accept their fate and neighboring nations cease disobeying Israel. To a supporter of the US empire, peace means all nations around the world submit to US unipolar hegemony. Many say they want peace when what they really want is tyranny. If “peace” to you means other populations bow down and submit to your will, then it makes perfect sense for you to believe that your wars are being waged to attain peace, because those wars are being used to violently bludgeon those populations into obedience. If your definition of peace means the cessation of all violence and abuse, then you will support ceasefires, peace negotiations, diplomacy, the de-escalation of tensions, the cessation of imperialist extraction, and the end of apartheid and injustice. Pay less attention to people’s words about wanting “peace” and focus instead on what actions they are supporting to accomplish that end. This will show you the truth about what they really want. ❖ https://x.com/caitoz/status/1748455323126632957?s=20 ❖ Someone asked “Can we all agree that our world would be better without a Hamas?” This is the sort of question that can only make sense to you if you view Hamas as some kind of invasive alien presence that was imposed upon Palestine from the outside instead of a natural emergence from the material circumstances that have been forced upon Palestinians. If you’ve got a group of people being sufficiently oppressed and violently persecuted by the ruling power, you’re going to start seeing violent opposition to that ruling power as sure as you’ll see blood arise from a wound. If Hamas had been completely eliminated a decade ago, there would be a Palestinian group organizing violence against the state of Israel today under that or some other name. If Hamas is completely eliminated tomorrow, there will be a Palestinian group organizing violence against the state of Israel in a matter of years (assuming there are any Palestinians left when this is all over, of course). If a man starts strangling me, at some point I’m going to try to gouge his eyes and crush his testicles. That’s just what happens when humans find themselves under a sufficient amount of existential pressure. Asking if the world would be better without Hamas is as nonsensical as asking if Alaska would be better without coats. The presence of coats in Alaska is the natural consequence of the material conditions in that region, and as long as those material conditions persist for the population of Alaska then there will necessarily be coats. Don’t ask if the world would be better without a Hamas, ask if the world would be better without the conditions which make a Hamas inevitable. ❖ Biden has started a new US war in Yemen while backing a genocide in Gaza, both of which are fully supported by the party which supposedly opposes him. But by all means go ahead and spend the rest of the year fixating on the US presidential race. ❖ Know how you can tell it no longer matters who the US president is? They stopped getting assassinated. ❖ The Biden administration’s justifications for its acts of war in Yemen are premised on the absurd assumption that the world economy should march on completely uninhibited during an active genocide. ❖ Supporting the world’s most powerful government bombing the poorest country in the middle east for trying to stop a genocide is the most sycophantic bootlicking you can possibly cram into a single political opinion. ❖ https://x.com/caitoz/status/1748478825602953304?s=20 ❖ Israel isn’t relentlessly murderous and abusive because it’s run by Jews, it’s relentlessly murderous and abusive because that’s the only way to maintain an ethnostate that was abruptly dropped on top of an already existing civilization. This would be true if it’d been a Mormon state or a Romani state. Take any already existing country with its own ethnic and religious makeup and its own relationships with surrounding countries and drop a brand new artificial ethnostate on top of it with a deluge of immigrants who are designated special and above the people in that region, and you’re going to get a ton of violence. You’re also going to see the dominant group espouse supremacist ideological beliefs to justify why it’s fine for them to be placed above the other group and receive better treatment by the state. These things would happen regardless of what those respective ethnic and religious makeups happen to be. How can we be sure of this? Because we’ve seen it happen time and time again in other settler-colonialist projects throughout history which had nothing to do with Jews or Muslims. It’s not about Jews and Judaism, it’s about the nature and character of the ethnostate which got placed overtop a pre-existing civilization in the 1940s. The religions and ethnicities are interchangeable with pretty much any other in terms of how much violence would be necessary to institute and maintain such a state. ❖ People who say they oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza but don’t forcefully oppose Biden’s facilitation of Israel’s actions in Gaza do not actually oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza. ❖ There’s a type of uninformed comment I keep seeing, usually from Americans, that goes something like this: “What do I care about Israel and Hamas? It’s none of our business and we should stay out of it.” This comment is born of the misunderstanding that people want the US to meddle in middle eastern affairs to stop the slaughter in Gaza, which is a notion many Americans reflexively oppose these days because they have learned that US “humanitarian interventions” in that region are consistently disastrous and often very costly. But that isn’t what’s being called for. What’s being called for is for the US to STOP intervening in Israel and Gaza — to END an intervention that is ALREADY taking place. The US has been pouring billions of dollars of weaponry into Israel every year for many years now, and has sent a whole lot more since October 7 to assist the Israeli butchery that’s been happening in Gaza. If the US ceased supporting Israel’s violence in Gaza, that violence would necessarily be forced to end. As a retired Israeli major general named Yitzhak Brick told the Jewish News Syndicate in November, “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.” If you don’t want your government engaging in foreign conflicts and intervening in foreign affairs, then you should oppose the US-backed massacres in Gaza, because that’s exactly what it is. The anti-interventionist position for an American to have is to demand that the Biden administration stop actively facilitating this mass atrocity. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/many-say-they-want-peace-when-what
    Like
    1
    0 Commentarios 0 Acciones 7189 Views
  • Many Say They Want Peace When What They Really Want Is Obedience: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix
    Caitlin JohnstoneWednesday 24 Jan 24
    Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):



    Everyone says they want peace, but they mean different things by this. To an anti-imperialist, peace means the end of violence, oppression and exploitation. To a Zionist, peace means Palestinians lie down and accept their fate and neighboring nations cease disobeying Israel. To a supporter of the US empire, peace means all nations around the world submit to US unipolar hegemony. Many say they want peace when what they really want is tyranny.

    If “peace” to you means other populations bow down and submit to your will, then it makes perfect sense for you to believe that your wars are being waged to attain peace, because those wars are being used to violently bludgeon those populations into obedience. If your definition of peace means the cessation of all violence and abuse, then you will support ceasefires, peace negotiations, diplomacy, the de-escalation of tensions, the cessation of imperialist extraction, and the end of apartheid and injustice.

    Pay less attention to people’s words about wanting “peace” and focus instead on what actions they are supporting to accomplish that end. This will show you the truth about what they really want.




    https://x.com/caitoz/status/1748455323126632957?s=20


    Someone asked “Can we all agree that our world would be better without a Hamas?”

    This is the sort of question that can only make sense to you if you view Hamas as some kind of invasive alien presence that was imposed upon Palestine from the outside instead of a natural emergence from the material circumstances that have been forced upon Palestinians. If you’ve got a group of people being sufficiently oppressed and violently persecuted by the ruling power, you’re going to start seeing violent opposition to that ruling power as sure as you’ll see blood arise from a wound.

    If Hamas had been completely eliminated a decade ago, there would be a Palestinian group organizing violence against the state of Israel today under that or some other name. If Hamas is completely eliminated tomorrow, there will be a Palestinian group organizing violence against the state of Israel in a matter of years (assuming there are any Palestinians left when this is all over, of course). If a man starts strangling me, at some point I’m going to try to gouge his eyes and crush his testicles. That’s just what happens when humans find themselves under a sufficient amount of existential pressure.

    Asking if the world would be better without Hamas is as nonsensical as asking if Alaska would be better without coats. The presence of coats in Alaska is the natural consequence of the material conditions in that region, and as long as those material conditions persist for the population of Alaska then there will necessarily be coats.

    Don’t ask if the world would be better without a Hamas, ask if the world would be better without the conditions which make a Hamas inevitable.



    Biden has started a new US war in Yemen while backing a genocide in Gaza, both of which are fully supported by the party which supposedly opposes him. But by all means go ahead and spend the rest of the year fixating on the US presidential race.



    Know how you can tell it no longer matters who the US president is? They stopped getting assassinated.



    The Biden administration’s justifications for its acts of war in Yemen are premised on the absurd assumption that the world economy should march on completely uninhibited during an active genocide.



    Supporting the world’s most powerful government bombing the poorest country in the middle east for trying to stop a genocide is the most sycophantic bootlicking you can possibly cram into a single political opinion.




    https://x.com/caitoz/status/1748478825602953304?s=20


    Israel isn’t relentlessly murderous and abusive because it’s run by Jews, it’s relentlessly murderous and abusive because that’s the only way to maintain an ethnostate that was abruptly dropped on top of an already existing civilization. This would be true if it’d been a Mormon state or a Romani state.

    Take any already existing country with its own ethnic and religious makeup and its own relationships with surrounding countries and drop a brand new artificial ethnostate on top of it with a deluge of immigrants who are designated special and above the people in that region, and you’re going to get a ton of violence. You’re also going to see the dominant group espouse supremacist ideological beliefs to justify why it’s fine for them to be placed above the other group and receive better treatment by the state. These things would happen regardless of what those respective ethnic and religious makeups happen to be.

    How can we be sure of this? Because we’ve seen it happen time and time again in other settler-colonialist projects throughout history which had nothing to do with Jews or Muslims.

    It’s not about Jews and Judaism, it’s about the nature and character of the ethnostate which got placed overtop a pre-existing civilization in the 1940s. The religions and ethnicities are interchangeable with pretty much any other in terms of how much violence would be necessary to institute and maintain such a state.



    People who say they oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza but don’t forcefully oppose Biden’s facilitation of Israel’s actions in Gaza do not actually oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza.



    There’s a type of uninformed comment I keep seeing, usually from Americans, that goes something like this: “What do I care about Israel and Hamas? It’s none of our business and we should stay out of it.”

    This comment is born of the misunderstanding that people want the US to meddle in middle eastern affairs to stop the slaughter in Gaza, which is a notion many Americans reflexively oppose these days because they have learned that US “humanitarian interventions” in that region are consistently disastrous and often very costly.

    But that isn’t what’s being called for. What’s being called for is for the US to STOP intervening in Israel and Gaza — to END an intervention that is ALREADY taking place. The US has been pouring billions of dollars of weaponry into Israel every year for many years now, and has sent a whole lot more since October 7 to assist the Israeli butchery that’s been happening in Gaza. If the US ceased supporting Israel’s violence in Gaza, that violence would necessarily be forced to end.

    As a retired Israeli major general named Yitzhak Brick told the Jewish News Syndicate in November, “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

    If you don’t want your government engaging in foreign conflicts and intervening in foreign affairs, then you should oppose the US-backed massacres in Gaza, because that’s exactly what it is. The anti-interventionist position for an American to have is to demand that the Biden administration stop actively facilitating this mass atrocity.

    https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/many-say-they-want-peace-when-what

    https://thealtworld.com/caitlin_johnston/many-say-they-want-peace-when-what-they-really-want-is-obedience
    Many Say They Want Peace When What They Really Want Is Obedience: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix Caitlin JohnstoneWednesday 24 Jan 24 Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): Everyone says they want peace, but they mean different things by this. To an anti-imperialist, peace means the end of violence, oppression and exploitation. To a Zionist, peace means Palestinians lie down and accept their fate and neighboring nations cease disobeying Israel. To a supporter of the US empire, peace means all nations around the world submit to US unipolar hegemony. Many say they want peace when what they really want is tyranny. If “peace” to you means other populations bow down and submit to your will, then it makes perfect sense for you to believe that your wars are being waged to attain peace, because those wars are being used to violently bludgeon those populations into obedience. If your definition of peace means the cessation of all violence and abuse, then you will support ceasefires, peace negotiations, diplomacy, the de-escalation of tensions, the cessation of imperialist extraction, and the end of apartheid and injustice. Pay less attention to people’s words about wanting “peace” and focus instead on what actions they are supporting to accomplish that end. This will show you the truth about what they really want. ❖ https://x.com/caitoz/status/1748455323126632957?s=20 ❖ Someone asked “Can we all agree that our world would be better without a Hamas?” This is the sort of question that can only make sense to you if you view Hamas as some kind of invasive alien presence that was imposed upon Palestine from the outside instead of a natural emergence from the material circumstances that have been forced upon Palestinians. If you’ve got a group of people being sufficiently oppressed and violently persecuted by the ruling power, you’re going to start seeing violent opposition to that ruling power as sure as you’ll see blood arise from a wound. If Hamas had been completely eliminated a decade ago, there would be a Palestinian group organizing violence against the state of Israel today under that or some other name. If Hamas is completely eliminated tomorrow, there will be a Palestinian group organizing violence against the state of Israel in a matter of years (assuming there are any Palestinians left when this is all over, of course). If a man starts strangling me, at some point I’m going to try to gouge his eyes and crush his testicles. That’s just what happens when humans find themselves under a sufficient amount of existential pressure. Asking if the world would be better without Hamas is as nonsensical as asking if Alaska would be better without coats. The presence of coats in Alaska is the natural consequence of the material conditions in that region, and as long as those material conditions persist for the population of Alaska then there will necessarily be coats. Don’t ask if the world would be better without a Hamas, ask if the world would be better without the conditions which make a Hamas inevitable. ❖ Biden has started a new US war in Yemen while backing a genocide in Gaza, both of which are fully supported by the party which supposedly opposes him. But by all means go ahead and spend the rest of the year fixating on the US presidential race. ❖ Know how you can tell it no longer matters who the US president is? They stopped getting assassinated. ❖ The Biden administration’s justifications for its acts of war in Yemen are premised on the absurd assumption that the world economy should march on completely uninhibited during an active genocide. ❖ Supporting the world’s most powerful government bombing the poorest country in the middle east for trying to stop a genocide is the most sycophantic bootlicking you can possibly cram into a single political opinion. ❖ https://x.com/caitoz/status/1748478825602953304?s=20 ❖ Israel isn’t relentlessly murderous and abusive because it’s run by Jews, it’s relentlessly murderous and abusive because that’s the only way to maintain an ethnostate that was abruptly dropped on top of an already existing civilization. This would be true if it’d been a Mormon state or a Romani state. Take any already existing country with its own ethnic and religious makeup and its own relationships with surrounding countries and drop a brand new artificial ethnostate on top of it with a deluge of immigrants who are designated special and above the people in that region, and you’re going to get a ton of violence. You’re also going to see the dominant group espouse supremacist ideological beliefs to justify why it’s fine for them to be placed above the other group and receive better treatment by the state. These things would happen regardless of what those respective ethnic and religious makeups happen to be. How can we be sure of this? Because we’ve seen it happen time and time again in other settler-colonialist projects throughout history which had nothing to do with Jews or Muslims. It’s not about Jews and Judaism, it’s about the nature and character of the ethnostate which got placed overtop a pre-existing civilization in the 1940s. The religions and ethnicities are interchangeable with pretty much any other in terms of how much violence would be necessary to institute and maintain such a state. ❖ People who say they oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza but don’t forcefully oppose Biden’s facilitation of Israel’s actions in Gaza do not actually oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza. ❖ There’s a type of uninformed comment I keep seeing, usually from Americans, that goes something like this: “What do I care about Israel and Hamas? It’s none of our business and we should stay out of it.” This comment is born of the misunderstanding that people want the US to meddle in middle eastern affairs to stop the slaughter in Gaza, which is a notion many Americans reflexively oppose these days because they have learned that US “humanitarian interventions” in that region are consistently disastrous and often very costly. But that isn’t what’s being called for. What’s being called for is for the US to STOP intervening in Israel and Gaza — to END an intervention that is ALREADY taking place. The US has been pouring billions of dollars of weaponry into Israel every year for many years now, and has sent a whole lot more since October 7 to assist the Israeli butchery that’s been happening in Gaza. If the US ceased supporting Israel’s violence in Gaza, that violence would necessarily be forced to end. As a retired Israeli major general named Yitzhak Brick told the Jewish News Syndicate in November, “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.” If you don’t want your government engaging in foreign conflicts and intervening in foreign affairs, then you should oppose the US-backed massacres in Gaza, because that’s exactly what it is. The anti-interventionist position for an American to have is to demand that the Biden administration stop actively facilitating this mass atrocity. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/many-say-they-want-peace-when-what https://thealtworld.com/caitlin_johnston/many-say-they-want-peace-when-what-they-really-want-is-obedience
    THEALTWORLD.COM
    Many Say They Want Peace When What They Really Want Is Obedience: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix - TheAltWorld
    "Don’t ask if the world would be better without a Hamas, ask if the world would be better without the conditions which make a Hamas inevitable."
    Angry
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  • Israel Committing Genocide to Steal Gaza’s Gas?
    Kevin Barrett, Senior EditorJanuary 23, 2024

    VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel

    $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts
    Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.

    Western mainstream media never approvingly cite alternative media. Owned and operated disproportionately by Zionist Jews, American MSM tilt strongly towards Israel. So it’s a sure bet that an alternative media story implicitly accusing Israel of committing genocide in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy to steal tens of billions of dollars worth of natural resources would never become a front page headline at The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, or any equivalent outlet.

    Al-Jazeera Arabic, the rough equivalent of a combined New York Times and CNN in English, doesn’t play by the same rules. So it isn’t all that surprising that one of its most recent articles on Israel’s attempt to steal Palestine’s gas cites Global Research and Mondoweiss.

    Below is my quick-and-dirty improvement on the Google Translate version of the article, with links to its sources.

    -Kevin Barrett

    The Palestinians are deprived of their wealth. What will happen to Israel’s plans to seize Gaza’s gas?

    By Mahmoud Yousef, for Al-Jazeera Arabic

    The unprecedented scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip and the continuation of Israel’s war on the Strip for more than 3 months put the Strip’s natural resources in the spotlight, amid international estimates that the occupation has prevented the Palestinians from benefiting from their natural resources estimated at billions of dollars, and seeks, through its current destructive war, to displace the people of Gaza.

    This comes 10 years after British journalist Felicity Arbuthnot warned that Israel seeks to be a major exporter of natural gas and “some oil.” At the time, Arbuthnot pointed out in her analysis that governments and media considered the giant natural gas field Leviathan, in the eastern Mediterranean, which was discovered in 2010, to be “off the coast of Israel,” in an implicit claim that it was Israeli, even though much of it was located in waters off the Gaza strip.

    “Israeli treasure”

    Israel claims that these reserves off the Gaza Strip are “its own treasure.” But only a small part of this gas is located in the Israeli area. Arbuthnot added that there is still a lot of gas unexplored that is gradually being discovered.

    For his part, Canadian economist Michel Chossodovsky, founder and president of the Center for Globalization Research and Felicity Arbuthnot’s collaborator, considers Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration of war last October on 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip “a continuation of the invasion of Gaza that began in 2008 as part of Operation Cast Lead.” Chossodowski adds that the primary goal of the operation is the explicit military occupation of Gaza by Israeli armed forces, the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland, and the confiscation of Gaza’s marine natural gas reserves, which are estimated at billions of dollars, specifically those discovered by British Gas in 1999 off the Strip, as well as Levant Basin discoveries in 2013.

    The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) indicated at the beginning of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation that one of its goals was to thwart an Israeli plan to seize Gaza and the West Bank and expel the population to both Egypt and Jordan.

    Secret conversations

    Al-Monitor newspaper reported on October 6, 2022, that the Egyptian regime succeeded in convincing Israel to begin extracting natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip, after several months of secret bilateral talks. According to the newspaper, the development came after years of Israeli objections to extracting natural gas off the coast of Gaza for alleged “security reasons.”

    British Gas also deals with the Israeli government, and pointed out that the Palestinian government in Gaza was bypassed in the agreement regarding exploration and development rights in gas fields. These fields, located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of the Gaza coast, were discovered by British Gas in 2000 and are estimated to contain more than one trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

    The newspaper quoted an Egyptian official as saying at the time that “an Egyptian economic and security delegation discussed with the Israeli side the issue of allowing the extraction of natural gas off the coast of Gaza.” The official explained to the newspaper that Israel had projected that it would begin extracting gas from Gaza’s fields at the beginning of 2024, to ensure its security.

    An international vision

    According to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) issued in 2019, geologists and economists in the field of natural resources confirmed that the occupied Palestinian territory is located above large reservoirs of oil and gas, in Area C of the occupied West Bank and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza Strip. But the occupation prevents Palestinians from developing and benefitting from their energy fields, so the Palestinian people have been deprived of the benefits of using this natural resource to finance social and economic development and meet their energy needs.

    The accumulated losses are estimated at billions of dollars, and the longer Israel prevents the Palestinians from exploiting their oil and gas reserves, the greater the opportunity costs, and the greater the total costs of the occupation borne by the Palestinians, according to the UN report.

    The report specifies assessments of current and potential Palestinian oil and natural gas reserves that can be exploited for the benefit of the Palestinian people, and which Israel prevents them from exploiting, or exploits without taking into account international law.

    Reserves swell

    Returning to what Arbuthnot mentioned in 2013, Leviathan, the most prominent field ever discovered in the Levant Basin, covers about 83,000 square kilometers of the eastern Mediterranean. Along with the nearby Tamar field, discovered in 2009, indications point toward considerable energy wealth controlled by Israel, Noble Energy, Avner Oil Exploration, and Ratio Oil Exploration. The estimated reserves of the Leviathan field have already increased from an estimated 16.7 trillion cubic feet of gas to 19 trillion cubic feet. According to Arbuthnot, “the average recoverable oil in the region is 1.7 billion barrels, and the average gas reserves are 122 trillion cubic feet, using a geology-based assessment methodology.”

    Gaza resources

    Writer Tara Alami said earlier, via the American “Mondoweiss” website, that the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip cannot be viewed in isolation from the rich natural gas resources that abound on its shores. The attack has deliberately destroyed buildings and infrastructure and killed thousands in an attempt to empty Gaza of its people and clear it for exploitation by the Occupation.

    Alami says that the Israeli project aims to build a racist colonial ethno-state by exporting “stolen gas” and concluding deals with neighboring countries. The European Union would also participate, since British Gas discovered gas fields off Gaza 25 years ago known as “Gaza Marine 1” and “Gaza Marine 2.”

    Alami adds that the Israeli occupation controls the energy and water resources in Gaza, which hinders efforts to establish an independent energy infrastructure in the Strip, while the Occupation benefits from “stolen gas” and water, while the Palestinians in Gaza suffer from a severe energy crisis.

    Alami points to Israel’s interest in extracting gas off the coasts of Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt, and attributes this to the Occupation’s goals that are strengthened by the Oslo Accords and the Paris Protocol, such as encouraging settlement expansion and restricting Palestinian access to resources.



    Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.

    He is the host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard-driving weekly radio show funded by listener subscriptions at Substack and the weekly news roundup FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN).

    He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS, and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.

    Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.

    Archived Articles (2004-2016)

    www.truthjihad.com


    ATTENTION READERS

    We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed
    In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion.

    About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy
    Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT.

    https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/01/israel-committing-genocide-to-steal-gazas-gas/
    Israel Committing Genocide to Steal Gaza’s Gas? Kevin Barrett, Senior EditorJanuary 23, 2024 VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State. Western mainstream media never approvingly cite alternative media. Owned and operated disproportionately by Zionist Jews, American MSM tilt strongly towards Israel. So it’s a sure bet that an alternative media story implicitly accusing Israel of committing genocide in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy to steal tens of billions of dollars worth of natural resources would never become a front page headline at The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, or any equivalent outlet. Al-Jazeera Arabic, the rough equivalent of a combined New York Times and CNN in English, doesn’t play by the same rules. So it isn’t all that surprising that one of its most recent articles on Israel’s attempt to steal Palestine’s gas cites Global Research and Mondoweiss. Below is my quick-and-dirty improvement on the Google Translate version of the article, with links to its sources. -Kevin Barrett The Palestinians are deprived of their wealth. What will happen to Israel’s plans to seize Gaza’s gas? By Mahmoud Yousef, for Al-Jazeera Arabic The unprecedented scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip and the continuation of Israel’s war on the Strip for more than 3 months put the Strip’s natural resources in the spotlight, amid international estimates that the occupation has prevented the Palestinians from benefiting from their natural resources estimated at billions of dollars, and seeks, through its current destructive war, to displace the people of Gaza. This comes 10 years after British journalist Felicity Arbuthnot warned that Israel seeks to be a major exporter of natural gas and “some oil.” At the time, Arbuthnot pointed out in her analysis that governments and media considered the giant natural gas field Leviathan, in the eastern Mediterranean, which was discovered in 2010, to be “off the coast of Israel,” in an implicit claim that it was Israeli, even though much of it was located in waters off the Gaza strip. “Israeli treasure” Israel claims that these reserves off the Gaza Strip are “its own treasure.” But only a small part of this gas is located in the Israeli area. Arbuthnot added that there is still a lot of gas unexplored that is gradually being discovered. For his part, Canadian economist Michel Chossodovsky, founder and president of the Center for Globalization Research and Felicity Arbuthnot’s collaborator, considers Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration of war last October on 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip “a continuation of the invasion of Gaza that began in 2008 as part of Operation Cast Lead.” Chossodowski adds that the primary goal of the operation is the explicit military occupation of Gaza by Israeli armed forces, the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland, and the confiscation of Gaza’s marine natural gas reserves, which are estimated at billions of dollars, specifically those discovered by British Gas in 1999 off the Strip, as well as Levant Basin discoveries in 2013. The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) indicated at the beginning of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation that one of its goals was to thwart an Israeli plan to seize Gaza and the West Bank and expel the population to both Egypt and Jordan. Secret conversations Al-Monitor newspaper reported on October 6, 2022, that the Egyptian regime succeeded in convincing Israel to begin extracting natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip, after several months of secret bilateral talks. According to the newspaper, the development came after years of Israeli objections to extracting natural gas off the coast of Gaza for alleged “security reasons.” British Gas also deals with the Israeli government, and pointed out that the Palestinian government in Gaza was bypassed in the agreement regarding exploration and development rights in gas fields. These fields, located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of the Gaza coast, were discovered by British Gas in 2000 and are estimated to contain more than one trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The newspaper quoted an Egyptian official as saying at the time that “an Egyptian economic and security delegation discussed with the Israeli side the issue of allowing the extraction of natural gas off the coast of Gaza.” The official explained to the newspaper that Israel had projected that it would begin extracting gas from Gaza’s fields at the beginning of 2024, to ensure its security. An international vision According to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) issued in 2019, geologists and economists in the field of natural resources confirmed that the occupied Palestinian territory is located above large reservoirs of oil and gas, in Area C of the occupied West Bank and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza Strip. But the occupation prevents Palestinians from developing and benefitting from their energy fields, so the Palestinian people have been deprived of the benefits of using this natural resource to finance social and economic development and meet their energy needs. The accumulated losses are estimated at billions of dollars, and the longer Israel prevents the Palestinians from exploiting their oil and gas reserves, the greater the opportunity costs, and the greater the total costs of the occupation borne by the Palestinians, according to the UN report. The report specifies assessments of current and potential Palestinian oil and natural gas reserves that can be exploited for the benefit of the Palestinian people, and which Israel prevents them from exploiting, or exploits without taking into account international law. Reserves swell Returning to what Arbuthnot mentioned in 2013, Leviathan, the most prominent field ever discovered in the Levant Basin, covers about 83,000 square kilometers of the eastern Mediterranean. Along with the nearby Tamar field, discovered in 2009, indications point toward considerable energy wealth controlled by Israel, Noble Energy, Avner Oil Exploration, and Ratio Oil Exploration. The estimated reserves of the Leviathan field have already increased from an estimated 16.7 trillion cubic feet of gas to 19 trillion cubic feet. According to Arbuthnot, “the average recoverable oil in the region is 1.7 billion barrels, and the average gas reserves are 122 trillion cubic feet, using a geology-based assessment methodology.” Gaza resources Writer Tara Alami said earlier, via the American “Mondoweiss” website, that the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip cannot be viewed in isolation from the rich natural gas resources that abound on its shores. The attack has deliberately destroyed buildings and infrastructure and killed thousands in an attempt to empty Gaza of its people and clear it for exploitation by the Occupation. Alami says that the Israeli project aims to build a racist colonial ethno-state by exporting “stolen gas” and concluding deals with neighboring countries. The European Union would also participate, since British Gas discovered gas fields off Gaza 25 years ago known as “Gaza Marine 1” and “Gaza Marine 2.” Alami adds that the Israeli occupation controls the energy and water resources in Gaza, which hinders efforts to establish an independent energy infrastructure in the Strip, while the Occupation benefits from “stolen gas” and water, while the Palestinians in Gaza suffer from a severe energy crisis. Alami points to Israel’s interest in extracting gas off the coasts of Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt, and attributes this to the Occupation’s goals that are strengthened by the Oslo Accords and the Paris Protocol, such as encouraging settlement expansion and restricting Palestinian access to resources. Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. He is the host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard-driving weekly radio show funded by listener subscriptions at Substack and the weekly news roundup FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN). He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS, and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host. Archived Articles (2004-2016) www.truthjihad.com ATTENTION READERS We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion. About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT. https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/01/israel-committing-genocide-to-steal-gazas-gas/
    WWW.VTFOREIGNPOLICY.COM
    Israel Committing Genocide to Steal Gaza’s Gas?
    Governments and media considered the giant natural gas field Leviathan, in the eastern Mediterranean, which was discovered in 2010, to be “off the coast of Israel.”
    Angry
    1
    0 Commentarios 0 Acciones 7937 Views
  • Israel Committing Genocide to Steal Gaza’s Gas?
    Kevin Barrett, Senior EditorJanuary 20, 2024

    VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel

    $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts
    Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State.

    Western mainstream media never approvingly cite alternative media. Owned and operated disproportionately by Zionist Jews, American MSM tilt strongly towards Israel. So it’s a sure bet that an alternative media story implicitly accusing Israel of committing genocide in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy to steal tens of billions of dollars worth of natural resources would never become a front page headline at The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, or any equivalent outlet.

    Al-Jazeera Arabic, the rough equivalent of a combined New York Times and CNN in English, doesn’t play by the same rules. So it isn’t all that surprising that one of its most recent articles on Israel’s attempt to steal Palestine’s gas cites Global Research and Mondoweiss.

    Below is my quick-and-dirty improvement on the Google Translate version of the article, with links to its sources.

    -Kevin Barrett

    The Palestinians are deprived of their wealth. What will happen to Israel’s plans to seize Gaza’s gas?

    By Mahmoud Yousef, for Al-Jazeera Arabic

    The unprecedented scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip and the continuation of Israel’s war on the Strip for more than 3 months put the Strip’s natural resources in the spotlight, amid international estimates that the occupation has prevented the Palestinians from benefiting from their natural resources estimated at billions of dollars, and seeks, through its current destructive war, to displace the people of Gaza.

    This comes 10 years after British journalist Felicity Arbuthnot warned that Israel seeks to be a major exporter of natural gas and “some oil.” At the time, Arbuthnot pointed out in her analysis that governments and media considered the giant natural gas field Leviathan, in the eastern Mediterranean, which was discovered in 2010, to be “off the coast of Israel,” in an implicit claim that it was Israeli, even though much of it was located in waters off the Gaza strip.

    “Israeli treasure”

    Israel claims that these reserves off the Gaza Strip are “its own treasure.” But only a small part of this gas is located in the Israeli area. Arbuthnot added that there is still a lot of gas unexplored that is gradually being discovered.

    For his part, Canadian economist Michel Chossodovsky, founder and president of the Center for Globalization Research and Felicity Arbuthnot’s collaborator, considers Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration of war last October on 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip “a continuation of the invasion of Gaza that began in 2008 as part of Operation Cast Lead.” Chossodowski adds that the primary goal of the operation is the explicit military occupation of Gaza by Israeli armed forces, the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland, and the confiscation of Gaza’s marine natural gas reserves, which are estimated at billions of dollars, specifically those discovered by British Gas in 1999 off the Strip, as well as Levant Basin discoveries in 2013.

    The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) indicated at the beginning of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation that one of its goals was to thwart an Israeli plan to seize Gaza and the West Bank and expel the population to both Egypt and Jordan.

    Secret conversations

    Al-Monitor newspaper reported on October 6, 2022, that the Egyptian regime succeeded in convincing Israel to begin extracting natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip, after several months of secret bilateral talks. According to the newspaper, the development came after years of Israeli objections to extracting natural gas off the coast of Gaza for alleged “security reasons.”

    British Gas also deals with the Israeli government, and pointed out that the Palestinian government in Gaza was bypassed in the agreement regarding exploration and development rights in gas fields. These fields, located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of the Gaza coast, were discovered by British Gas in 2000 and are estimated to contain more than one trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

    The newspaper quoted an Egyptian official as saying at the time that “an Egyptian economic and security delegation discussed with the Israeli side the issue of allowing the extraction of natural gas off the coast of Gaza.” The official explained to the newspaper that Israel had projected that it would begin extracting gas from Gaza’s fields at the beginning of 2024, to ensure its security.

    An international vision

    According to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) issued in 2019, geologists and economists in the field of natural resources confirmed that the occupied Palestinian territory is located above large reservoirs of oil and gas, in Area C of the occupied West Bank and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza Strip. But the occupation prevents Palestinians from developing and benefitting from their energy fields, so the Palestinian people have been deprived of the benefits of using this natural resource to finance social and economic development and meet their energy needs.

    The accumulated losses are estimated at billions of dollars, and the longer Israel prevents the Palestinians from exploiting their oil and gas reserves, the greater the opportunity costs, and the greater the total costs of the occupation borne by the Palestinians, according to the UN report.

    The report specifies assessments of current and potential Palestinian oil and natural gas reserves that can be exploited for the benefit of the Palestinian people, and which Israel prevents them from exploiting, or exploits without taking into account international law.

    Reserves swell

    Returning to what Arbuthnot mentioned in 2013, Leviathan, the most prominent field ever discovered in the Levant Basin, covers about 83,000 square kilometers of the eastern Mediterranean. Along with the nearby Tamar field, discovered in 2009, indications point toward considerable energy wealth controlled by Israel, Noble Energy, Avner Oil Exploration, and Ratio Oil Exploration. The estimated reserves of the Leviathan field have already increased from an estimated 16.7 trillion cubic feet of gas to 19 trillion cubic feet. According to Arbuthnot, “the average recoverable oil in the region is 1.7 billion barrels, and the average gas reserves are 122 trillion cubic feet, using a geology-based assessment methodology.”

    Gaza resources

    Writer Tara Alami said earlier, via the American “Mondoweiss” website, that the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip cannot be viewed in isolation from the rich natural gas resources that abound on its shores. The attack has deliberately destroyed buildings and infrastructure and killed thousands in an attempt to empty Gaza of its people and clear it for exploitation by the Occupation.

    Alami says that the Israeli project aims to build a racist colonial ethno-state by exporting “stolen gas” and concluding deals with neighboring countries. The European Union would also participate, since British Gas discovered gas fields off Gaza 25 years ago known as “Gaza Marine 1” and “Gaza Marine 2.”

    Alami adds that the Israeli occupation controls the energy and water resources in Gaza, which hinders efforts to establish an independent energy infrastructure in the Strip, while the Occupation benefits from “stolen gas” and water, while the Palestinians in Gaza suffer from a severe energy crisis.

    Alami points to Israel’s interest in extracting gas off the coasts of Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt, and attributes this to the Occupation’s goals that are strengthened by the Oslo Accords and the Paris Protocol, such as encouraging settlement expansion and restricting Palestinian access to resources.



    Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.

    He is the host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard-driving weekly radio show funded by listener subscriptions at Substack and the weekly news roundup FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN).

    He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS, and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.

    Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.

    Archived Articles (2004-2016)

    www.truthjihad.com


    ATTENTION READERS

    We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed
    In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion.

    About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy
    Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT.

    https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/01/israel-committing-genocide-to-steal-gazas-gas/
    Israel Committing Genocide to Steal Gaza’s Gas? Kevin Barrett, Senior EditorJanuary 20, 2024 VT Condemns the ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINIANS by USA/Israel $ 280 BILLION US TAXPAYER DOLLARS INVESTED since 1948 in US/Israeli Ethnic Cleansing and Occupation Operation; $ 150B direct "aid" and $ 130B in "Offense" contracts Source: Embassy of Israel, Washington, D.C. and US Department of State. Western mainstream media never approvingly cite alternative media. Owned and operated disproportionately by Zionist Jews, American MSM tilt strongly towards Israel. So it’s a sure bet that an alternative media story implicitly accusing Israel of committing genocide in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy to steal tens of billions of dollars worth of natural resources would never become a front page headline at The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, or any equivalent outlet. Al-Jazeera Arabic, the rough equivalent of a combined New York Times and CNN in English, doesn’t play by the same rules. So it isn’t all that surprising that one of its most recent articles on Israel’s attempt to steal Palestine’s gas cites Global Research and Mondoweiss. Below is my quick-and-dirty improvement on the Google Translate version of the article, with links to its sources. -Kevin Barrett The Palestinians are deprived of their wealth. What will happen to Israel’s plans to seize Gaza’s gas? By Mahmoud Yousef, for Al-Jazeera Arabic The unprecedented scale of destruction in the Gaza Strip and the continuation of Israel’s war on the Strip for more than 3 months put the Strip’s natural resources in the spotlight, amid international estimates that the occupation has prevented the Palestinians from benefiting from their natural resources estimated at billions of dollars, and seeks, through its current destructive war, to displace the people of Gaza. This comes 10 years after British journalist Felicity Arbuthnot warned that Israel seeks to be a major exporter of natural gas and “some oil.” At the time, Arbuthnot pointed out in her analysis that governments and media considered the giant natural gas field Leviathan, in the eastern Mediterranean, which was discovered in 2010, to be “off the coast of Israel,” in an implicit claim that it was Israeli, even though much of it was located in waters off the Gaza strip. “Israeli treasure” Israel claims that these reserves off the Gaza Strip are “its own treasure.” But only a small part of this gas is located in the Israeli area. Arbuthnot added that there is still a lot of gas unexplored that is gradually being discovered. For his part, Canadian economist Michel Chossodovsky, founder and president of the Center for Globalization Research and Felicity Arbuthnot’s collaborator, considers Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration of war last October on 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip “a continuation of the invasion of Gaza that began in 2008 as part of Operation Cast Lead.” Chossodowski adds that the primary goal of the operation is the explicit military occupation of Gaza by Israeli armed forces, the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland, and the confiscation of Gaza’s marine natural gas reserves, which are estimated at billions of dollars, specifically those discovered by British Gas in 1999 off the Strip, as well as Levant Basin discoveries in 2013. The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) indicated at the beginning of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation that one of its goals was to thwart an Israeli plan to seize Gaza and the West Bank and expel the population to both Egypt and Jordan. Secret conversations Al-Monitor newspaper reported on October 6, 2022, that the Egyptian regime succeeded in convincing Israel to begin extracting natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip, after several months of secret bilateral talks. According to the newspaper, the development came after years of Israeli objections to extracting natural gas off the coast of Gaza for alleged “security reasons.” British Gas also deals with the Israeli government, and pointed out that the Palestinian government in Gaza was bypassed in the agreement regarding exploration and development rights in gas fields. These fields, located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of the Gaza coast, were discovered by British Gas in 2000 and are estimated to contain more than one trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The newspaper quoted an Egyptian official as saying at the time that “an Egyptian economic and security delegation discussed with the Israeli side the issue of allowing the extraction of natural gas off the coast of Gaza.” The official explained to the newspaper that Israel had projected that it would begin extracting gas from Gaza’s fields at the beginning of 2024, to ensure its security. An international vision According to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) issued in 2019, geologists and economists in the field of natural resources confirmed that the occupied Palestinian territory is located above large reservoirs of oil and gas, in Area C of the occupied West Bank and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza Strip. But the occupation prevents Palestinians from developing and benefitting from their energy fields, so the Palestinian people have been deprived of the benefits of using this natural resource to finance social and economic development and meet their energy needs. The accumulated losses are estimated at billions of dollars, and the longer Israel prevents the Palestinians from exploiting their oil and gas reserves, the greater the opportunity costs, and the greater the total costs of the occupation borne by the Palestinians, according to the UN report. The report specifies assessments of current and potential Palestinian oil and natural gas reserves that can be exploited for the benefit of the Palestinian people, and which Israel prevents them from exploiting, or exploits without taking into account international law. Reserves swell Returning to what Arbuthnot mentioned in 2013, Leviathan, the most prominent field ever discovered in the Levant Basin, covers about 83,000 square kilometers of the eastern Mediterranean. Along with the nearby Tamar field, discovered in 2009, indications point toward considerable energy wealth controlled by Israel, Noble Energy, Avner Oil Exploration, and Ratio Oil Exploration. The estimated reserves of the Leviathan field have already increased from an estimated 16.7 trillion cubic feet of gas to 19 trillion cubic feet. According to Arbuthnot, “the average recoverable oil in the region is 1.7 billion barrels, and the average gas reserves are 122 trillion cubic feet, using a geology-based assessment methodology.” Gaza resources Writer Tara Alami said earlier, via the American “Mondoweiss” website, that the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip cannot be viewed in isolation from the rich natural gas resources that abound on its shores. The attack has deliberately destroyed buildings and infrastructure and killed thousands in an attempt to empty Gaza of its people and clear it for exploitation by the Occupation. Alami says that the Israeli project aims to build a racist colonial ethno-state by exporting “stolen gas” and concluding deals with neighboring countries. The European Union would also participate, since British Gas discovered gas fields off Gaza 25 years ago known as “Gaza Marine 1” and “Gaza Marine 2.” Alami adds that the Israeli occupation controls the energy and water resources in Gaza, which hinders efforts to establish an independent energy infrastructure in the Strip, while the Occupation benefits from “stolen gas” and water, while the Palestinians in Gaza suffer from a severe energy crisis. Alami points to Israel’s interest in extracting gas off the coasts of Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt, and attributes this to the Occupation’s goals that are strengthened by the Oslo Accords and the Paris Protocol, such as encouraging settlement expansion and restricting Palestinian access to resources. Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. He is the host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard-driving weekly radio show funded by listener subscriptions at Substack and the weekly news roundup FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN). He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS, and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host. Archived Articles (2004-2016) www.truthjihad.com ATTENTION READERS We See The World From All Sides and Want YOU To Be Fully Informed In fact, intentional disinformation is a disgraceful scourge in media today. So to assuage any possible errant incorrect information posted herein, we strongly encourage you to seek corroboration from other non-VT sources before forming an educated opinion. About VT - Policies & Disclosures - Comment Policy Due to the nature of uncensored content posted by VT's fully independent international writers, VT cannot guarantee absolute validity. All content is owned by the author exclusively. Expressed opinions are NOT necessarily the views of VT, other authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors, partners, or technicians. Some content may be satirical in nature. All images are the full responsibility of the article author and NOT VT. https://www.vtforeignpolicy.com/2024/01/israel-committing-genocide-to-steal-gazas-gas/
    WWW.VTFOREIGNPOLICY.COM
    Israel Committing Genocide to Steal Gaza’s Gas?
    Governments and media considered the giant natural gas field Leviathan, in the eastern Mediterranean, which was discovered in 2010, to be “off the coast of Israel.”
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  • Look what they did to Reiner Fuellmich! He’s a political prisoner in Nazi Germany!

    Update: Reiner Füellmich Speaks Out. His Personal Statement & Press Release From The Defence.


    Update: Reiner Füellmich Speaks Out. His Personal Statement & Press Release From The Defence.
    Patricia HarrityDecember 27, 2023

    Dr Reiner Füellmich has been imprisoned for almost 11 weeks now. He has written his own personal account, part one of which was read aloud on Bittel TV and translated. He had said “It isn’t over.” The corona pandemic was only the test run to find out what people will go along with when we put them into panic through psycho-terror. We must look behind the panic propaganda, so we can see the truth.” He added “Without justice there is no peace and no returning to a humane world. That also holds for my case.” The English translation of part one can be found here.

    The official translation for parts 2 and 3 from the Reiner Füellmich team were received by Elsa Scheider from the Truth Summit last week and have been republished below for our readers who have shown a concern and interest in Reiner’s situation Source . This is followed by the press release from the defense team published on 23rd December.

    “The Truth” – Personal Statement by Dr. Reiner Füellmich’

    Part 2: The beginning of the Corona Committee

    Dear friends, activists, and fellow human beings interested in the truth.

    This is the 2nd part of my “Personal Statement” to make the events of the last weeks, months and years transparent for all of you.

    How did it come about that serious allegations of embezzlement were made against me publicly and in a criminal complaint by four former comrades-in-arms in the Corona Committee? Who were the people I trusted when I worked with the Corona Committee? How did it come about that I am now sitting in a high-security prison in Germany – and completely innocent?

    Above all, I have to reproach myself, because my professional gut feeling clearly betrayed me (or I didn’t listen closely enough), and I simply didn’t attend enough to details in the daily TO-DOs, otherwise I would have noticed the planned coup much earlier.

    But first things first:

    My wife Inka and I lived with our dogs on our ranch in Northern California until the beginning of June 2020 and I did my legal work mainly from there. When the plandemic started in 2020, we were both immediately convinced – that something was amiss here. I quickly packed my bags, because I wanted to help shed light on the plandemic in Germany. After all, I had 30 years of experience as a litigator and spent many years studying medical and pharmaceutical law at the University of Göttingen. In addition, I had many contacts from my work in medical law.

    Dr. WW, whom I trusted at the time, put me in touch with Ms. VF. At the first face-to-face meeting in Berlin, I was bothered by some of her behavior, but I decided to take off my critical glasses, ignore my gut feeling and trust a friend.

    We agreed to establish the Corona Committee because it was clear in June 2020 that the German Bundestag, which was actually responsible for this, would not start its own investigation, for reasons that were not yet apparent to me at the time. The Corona Committee was to clarify these key questions immediately:

    1. How dangerous is the supposedly novel corona virus really?
    2. How reliable and suitable is the PCR test for detecting corona infections?
    3. How harmful are the Corona measures, i.e. the lockdowns, the mask requirement, social distancing and the threat of so-called vaccinations?
    Scientists, doctors, economists, lawyers, politicians, etc. should help support us in clarifying the questions. Two German scientists, a professor of finance and an expert in immunology and vaccinations were already part of our circle. Unfortunately, they did not agree with the contracts of VF drawn up by her notary and therefore they left us.

    I recall that one of them also distrusted VF from the start.

    We needed replacements quickly. Two years earlier, while working for the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International, I had met law professor Martin Schwab and had been friends with him ever since. He, in turn, had introduced me to two lawyers from Hamburg whom he had promoted. Trusting in Prof. Schwab’s expertise, I asked the two of them if they wanted to move up as a replacement for the scientists in the Corona Committee. Today I know that this was the beginning of the end. Both quickly showed that money meant more to them than clarification and enlightenment.

    The Corona Committee quickly met with completely unexpected success. Since we conducted the expert surveys in German and English via video-stream, our Friday broadcasts quickly became popular worldwide. Many people had been convinced that we would later use the findings from these interviews as evidence in international damages proceedings such as in class action. We were in the right place at the right time with our work. I was and still am convinced of that.

    Internally, unfortunately, things looked different. I quickly noticed that VF and the others showed little interest in our work in contrast to myself, who concentrated almost completely on this work. In addition to the interviews in the committee, I gave five international interviews at that time, and thereby, endeavored to provide information about our work worldwide and not just in Germany.

    After I had learned from critical experts that a PCR test could under no circumstances detect an infection, and it had been deliberately abused here, I published a 50-minute video in German and English in September 2020. There I explained that the Corona measures, which had already led to more and more victims and damage at that time, could be qualified as crimes against humanity, and that it would be best to clarify them legally with the means of Anglo-American law. To my surprise, the video was viewed millions of times before it was suddenly deleted by YouTube/Google.

    On the basis of this video, the American colleague Robert F. Kennedy jr., whom I first met in Berlin in August 2020, founded the “PCR Test working group” on his platform CHD, with the help of its president Mary Holland. I also belong to this group. Since October 2020, respected scientists, doctors, lawyers, etc. have been meeting there every week to discuss all aspects related to the plandemic.

    At the same time, I regularly summarized our long interviews at the Corona Committee on Sundays on Roger Bittel’s platform “Bittel.TV”. The enormous popularity of the Corona Committee led to a large number of inquiries as early as August 2020. In particular, small and medium-sized enterprises wanted to know how they could get compensation for the damage suffered as a result of the lockdowns. And fellow lawyers from all over the world wanted to be connected with the experts. At that time, many lawyers still believed that a judicial hearing of evidence with our PCR test experts would quickly bring down the entire panic, based on deception and manipulation.

    This led to the collection of funds (700 € per person) for a possible class action. The funds are all there, but have been fraudulently diverted to another account. I will report on this in detail elsewhere.

    Due to my almost 30 years of litigation experience, I was rather sceptical that a solid legal approach would quickly succeed in Germany and also in the rest of the world. Therefore, I advised to conduct damages litigation in an Anglo-American country, where there is the possibility of class actions and a real right of evidence and punitive damages for intentional damages. My international colleagues are working flat out on this. The issue of class action lawsuits is as present as ever and we are convinced that it will ultimately bring success.


    Part 3 – The end of the Corona Committee – Unfortunate circumstances or a long-planned coup?

    Dear friends, activists and fellow human beings interested in the truth,

    in the 3rd part of my personal statement, it will quickly become apparent to you that I was more and more a lone fighter in matters of the Corona Committee and that my co-partners pulled a common string to get rid of me and also to ruin me privately. I share responsibility here. As a human being, but even more so as a lawyer, I should have seen the events coming and prevented them.

    Back to my account. So, while I was on my way, also with international lawyers, for the CA and putting all my energy into it, strangely enough, the other members didn’t seem to be so aware of the importance of the Corona Committee‘s work. None of them attended the strategy meetings. None of them made any effort to publicize the work of the Committee, especially beyond the borders of Germany. From the end of 2020 onwards, JH and AF in particular were only interested in how they could earn as much money as possible with Corona mandates with their newly founded office community.

    When, at the end of 2021 / beginning of 2022, together with the group of international lawyers, I conducted the Model Grand Jury investigations with the help of our experts to show that, and how, a legal clarification of the plandemic could work, these lawyers no longer played a role at all. However, the Model Grand Jury Investigation became a success that attracted worldwide attention.

    The work of the Corona Committee was now so popular that by the end of 2020 we had already received a lot of donations. However, we only needed part of this to pay for our technology, IT, translators and expenses for my office, etc. There was a large amount of money in our donation account. This money was not safe from our point of view. A blocking or seizure of the accounts would have rendered us immediately incapacitated. Therefore, VF and I decided to leave only the amounts directly required for the work of the Corona Committee in the donation account and to keep the funds that were not needed at first safe from possible access.

    The State Office for Criminal Investigation in Lower Saxony, as I know today, had asked the public prosecutor’s office to investigate VF, RF, AF and JH and a colleague who had temporarily managed the donation account because of suspicious money laundering reports from the banks, which had repeatedly terminated our donation account. These investigations were later discontinued.

    To make sure that we would not be vulnerable because of the securing of the money, we concluded loan agreements, which were also openly shown in the annual financial statements. Of course, there would have been no point in transferring the loans from one disclosed account to another open account. So we decided to invest them in my German property (as an equivalent value) and in gold as a safe store of value. The house had a value of €1,345,000. We wanted to sell it anyway and look for a new place to live in Germany. Therefore, the money I took out on a loan basis was safe, as I believed at the time. But things turned out differently. I will report on that.

    In addition, I invested 1.1 million EUR in donations in gold. This was also openly disclosed in the annual financial statements. VF also entered into a contract with Corona Committee to obtain a loan. This withdrawal also served to secure our money. The loan went over € 100,000 which is also reported in the annual financial statements.

    In July / August 2021, JH and AF suddenly contacted us again to get information about the donations. I suspected that their legal efforts had been unsuccessful. In the meantime, I had learned that they had no structure in their office and, in particular, had not even been able to hire at least one secretary. I hadn’t checked this at the beginning of our collaboration, a mistake on my part in hindsight.

    Since JH and AF had effectively left the work of the Corona Committee and also because they had recently been working closely with a person who, as I know today, infiltrated the political party “dieBasis” together with a Freemason, we initially refused to provide this information.

    But in order not to waste energy on avoidable arguments, we finally handed in an overview of income and expenditures. It quickly became clear that they wanted to “hijack” the Corona Committee and at least eliminate me from it. When the attempt failed, JH proposed in a written settlement that he and AF would leave the company if we pay them half of the donations to an account of their mentor, Prof. Dr. Martin Schwab. Of course, VF and I rejected this and asked JH and AF not to show up in the committee anymore.

    We didn’t hear from them for about a year. At the end of 2021, with my consent and with the help of their notary, VF created a new company for the operation of the Corona Committee. VF and I held a 50 percent stake in this company. This new Corona Committee has its own account, so it no longer has to rely on lawyers’ escrow accounts. All the rights of the old company were also transferred to this new company. I agreed to the contracts submitted to me by VF.

    At the beginning of 2022, working with VF had become increasingly difficult. That’s why I accepted the offer to participate in the Crimes Against Humanity Tour in the US. This meant that I would spend almost three and a half months traveling through nine U.S. cities and giving lectures with two well-known U.S. scientists, Dr. Judy Mikovits and the economist and expert on technology and transhumanism, Patrick Wood. However, from there I continued all the activities related to the Corona Committee: I continued the interviews via Zoom, gave an average of five interviews per week, participated in the conferences of the PCR Test Working Group and summarised the meetings of the Committee every weekend on Bittel.TV. In addition, I worked with international colleagues to initiate legal proceedings with the aim of large-scale damages lawsuits. At the time, I was on the verge of burnout…

    After my return from the U.S., I realized that VF’s chaotic incompetence and indifference to our guests, which I had grudgingly accepted until then, had increased even more. That’s why I confronted her in July 2022. I informed her that I would be going back to our ranch in California with my wife and dogs, also to be closer to the relevant legal action, but that I would continue the committee work as usual. Also, I desperately wanted more input from her!

    Immediately afterwards, as I know today, VF got in touch with JH and AF again, as well as their law firm colleague MT. In August 2022, there was a meeting and a discussion. Following this meeting, the joint public defamation campaign against me started on 9-2-.2022 and criminal charges were filed against me on the same day. I didn’t know anything about that at the time. Due to the coincidence of the date of the “dismissal” and the criminal complaint, it is clear to me today that “the other side” was never interested in resolving the disputes.

    A week before 9-2-.2022, VF had informed me that there would be no Corona committee broadcast on that day because our TV manager’s wife was going to have her second child. A lie, as I later realized. But I believed that lie and did not appear, VF and WW had – as VF puts it – “a clear shot“ at me. VF appeared in front of the Corona Committee’s camera dramatically dressed in black. She declared, without informing me as her partner, that I was no longer allowed to appear at the Corona Committee. So she decided unilaterally and completely arbitrarily that I was no longer allowed to be present in the Corona Committee that I had shaped until then, in whose company I owned 50 percent then as now!

    In order to justify her illegal and unlawful actions, she and WW, also in front of the camera, stated that I was to be accused of financial irregularities and that I was otherwise “a loudmouth”. WW was particularly fond of this label.

    I didn’t want to unnecessarily burden the Corona Committee and its worldwide reputation with internal problems. A vain hope.

    A short time later, VF, WW, JH, AF and VF’s partner at the time appeared in front of the camera for an hour-long Reiner Fuellmich tribunal. This campaign eventually culminated in several increasingly insane videos from VF claiming that “the children of the committee staff must be starving“ because of me. Apparently completely unhinged, she finally called for a “hunt for me” and crowned this call with a “Halali”, a German hunting call that signals the end of a hunt. Not only I, but also the viewers were shocked, as could be seen from the comments in the chat.

    The content of the 30-page criminal complaint, which JH also filed on behalf of AF and MT, reads even crazier. JH, AF and MT knew in 2020 that € 700,000 had been secured by me by loan agreement and secured with my property. They also knew that the sale of my house has been planned for a long time and was imminent. Our property was sold on 03/10/2022 for € 1,345,000.00 in our absence through a notary. As mentioned, we have never seen any of this money to this day! How this coup took place, I will explain in the next part.

    And it gets even worse: After receiving the criminal complaint, I should have been heard, in accordance with the principle audiatur et altera pars. But I was denied this. Today I know the reasons: JH claimed to the prosecution that I was threatening him “with a Winchester”. And because that didn’t seem dangerous enough, he went on to claim that I, as a member of the party “dieBasis”, would radicalize other members and call for violence against him. In addition, I was an anti-Semite and he would feel threatened because of his ethnic origin.

    Because of these completely fictitious threat scenarios, my wife and I were denied the right to a fair clarification of the situation by the authorities for more than a year. Apparently, the public prosecutor’s office felt pressured by these threat scenarios. JH even told the authorities that the other two plaintiffs would withdraw the criminal complaint if the prosecution granted me a fair hearing. Literally, he writes: “… if Fuellmich or any of the other defendants were given the opportunity to comment before criminal proceedings were initiated, the witnesses (i.e. VF, JH, AF and MT) would refrain from filing the criminal complaint for fear of threats, violence and defamation.”

    Subsequently, my wife’s private account was seized. When our lawyers asked for my wife to be heard, they were told that they would not receive any information because she was also under investigation. A European arrest warrant was then issued for me on 3-15-2023, of course without me being granted the right to be heard.

    In the meantime, my wife and I had left for a trip to Peru regarding the class action lawsuit. On the way back we wanted to visit friends in Mexico and fly back to Germany from there. There, we received information from our hometown that the authorities were allegedly looking for me. Unfortunately, the colleagues from my law firm did not receive any information from the authorities about the situation. So we couldn’t really assess the new scenario back home, so we stayed in Mexico for the time being.

    As a counterpart to the Corona Committee, I now had my own label “ICIC”, with which, as before in the Committee, I interviewed international experts on global crimes against humanity. A small working group from the former Corona Committee had followed me and so we were able to quickly get back to work.

    Nevertheless, in October 2023, everything plunged into complete chaos again. It ended with the execution of the above-mentioned European arrest warrant against me in Frankfurt, after I had previously been deported from a non-European country (Mexico) under police protection. – A thriller that, as I know today, was anything but a coincidence. I’ll tell you about that in the next episode.

    As a result, I’ve been sitting in prison for weeks now. The real perpetrators are still free. They also possess the class action lawsuit money and the money from my private home. I can prove that. All documents are safely stored with my legal team. How the “agitators” brought all this to a “successful” conclusion for them, I will report on in the next episode. Source

    Reiner Füellmich: Press Release From The Defence.


    Originally published by Elsa at Truth Summit on 23rd December 2023.

    One could say that the truth is boring – meaning, Reiner said basically the same thing a few days after VF spoke against him as he is saying now, and as is stated in the press release from the defense. There are a couple of further details. They add a tiny bit, but nothing is changed.

    So here is the press release.

    On November 17, 2023 the Göttingen public prosecutor’s office brought charges against Dr. Reiner Füellmich on the basis of a criminal complaint filed by former shareholders without the defense having prior access to all volumes of the investigation file or the opportunity to comment. An interrogation of the accused pursuant to Section 163a of the German Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO) was also not conducted before the indictment was filed. Likewise, the witnesses named predominantly in the indictment were not questioned.

    On the one hand, the sum of €700,000 is at issue, which is already the subject of the arrest warrant. However, the basis for the payment of the €700,000 were two loan agreements also signed by Viviane Fischer (one dated November 6, 2020 for €200,000 and one dated May 14, 2021 for €500,000).

    The public prosecutor’s office incorrectly assumed at the time of the indictment that both loan agreements involved inadmissible self-dealing. However, according to the complete founding minutes of July 9, 2020 all four shareholders were appointed as managing directors with sole power of representation, so that Viviane Fischer was able to effectively represent the Corona-Committee-Entrepreneurial-company-in-formation alone in both loan agreements.

    At the time, rumors were circulating about the seizure of accounts at MWGFD; in fact, accounts were seized from the prominent member Prof. Dr. Hockertz, as well as subsequently from other doctors who were prosecuted under criminal law on the subject of the corona measures, and finally, as the most prominent example, from Michael Ballweg, who was also remanded in custody for 9 months.

    The donations should therefore be invested in sustainable stores of value, such as gold or real estate. The Corona Committee bought around 1 million worth of gold, which is still stored securely at Degussa. Reiner Füellmich’s property was intended as the equivalent value for the loan amount of € 700,000.

    At the time of the sale on October 3, 2022, the property was unencumbered and the € 700,000 was to be repaid to the Corona Committee from the purchase price of € 1,345,000. However, this was prevented until today by the entry of a land charge on November 18, 2022, i.e. one and a half months later – in our opinion unlawful – and the payment of an amount of € 1,158,250 in favor of the complainant Marcel Templin. This matter must be clarified, also by the public prosecutor’s office.

    It is irrelevant whether amounts were spent on redesigning the garden of the property, as this directly benefited the increase in value and thus the achievement of a higher purchase price.

    The indictment also alleges payments made by the Corona Committee to Reiner Füellmich’s law firm in the amount of €25,000 per month plus VAT in the period from January 1, 2021 to July 31, 2022. According to the indictment, these funds were used up for wage and salary payments and social security contributions for the employees of his law firm.

    The public prosecutor’s office fails to recognize that the employees of Füellmich’s law firm provided a service in return for these monthly payments to the Corona Committee. For two years, they were almost exclusively occupied with answering inquiries to the Corona Committee. Over 300,000 emails were answered, hundreds to thousands of telephone calls were made and thousands of letters were answered. Due to the sheer volume of emails, a new IT system also had to be purchased. This work, which was absolutely essential for the Committee’s continued existence, was not carried out at the Committee’s headquarters in Berlin.

    Communication with the supporters of the Corona Committee included initial legal advice for those seeking help, the acquisition of interview partners, the selection of scientists and other experts, who ultimately had their say at the weekly meetings.

    If this communication had not taken place, the Corona Committee could have ceased its work shortly after it was set up.

    The services provided by the employees of the Füellmich law firm were therefore part of the committee’s corporate purpose. The witnesses named by the public prosecutor in the indictment for this set of crimes were not heard before the indictment was filed, which is unusual.

    Source Truth Summit


    Elsa from the Truth Summit adds – PS. To donate for legal and other expenses, here is the link: https://www.givesendgo.com/GBBX2

    https://expose-news.com/2023/12/27/update-reiner-fuellmich-speaks-out-his-personal-statement-press-release-from-the-defence/
    Look what they did to Reiner Fuellmich! He’s a political prisoner in Nazi Germany! Update: Reiner Füellmich Speaks Out. His Personal Statement & Press Release From The Defence. Update: Reiner Füellmich Speaks Out. His Personal Statement & Press Release From The Defence. Patricia HarrityDecember 27, 2023 Dr Reiner Füellmich has been imprisoned for almost 11 weeks now. He has written his own personal account, part one of which was read aloud on Bittel TV and translated. He had said “It isn’t over.” The corona pandemic was only the test run to find out what people will go along with when we put them into panic through psycho-terror. We must look behind the panic propaganda, so we can see the truth.” He added “Without justice there is no peace and no returning to a humane world. That also holds for my case.” The English translation of part one can be found here. The official translation for parts 2 and 3 from the Reiner Füellmich team were received by Elsa Scheider from the Truth Summit last week and have been republished below for our readers who have shown a concern and interest in Reiner’s situation Source . This is followed by the press release from the defense team published on 23rd December. “The Truth” – Personal Statement by Dr. Reiner Füellmich’ Part 2: The beginning of the Corona Committee Dear friends, activists, and fellow human beings interested in the truth. This is the 2nd part of my “Personal Statement” to make the events of the last weeks, months and years transparent for all of you. How did it come about that serious allegations of embezzlement were made against me publicly and in a criminal complaint by four former comrades-in-arms in the Corona Committee? Who were the people I trusted when I worked with the Corona Committee? How did it come about that I am now sitting in a high-security prison in Germany – and completely innocent? Above all, I have to reproach myself, because my professional gut feeling clearly betrayed me (or I didn’t listen closely enough), and I simply didn’t attend enough to details in the daily TO-DOs, otherwise I would have noticed the planned coup much earlier. But first things first: My wife Inka and I lived with our dogs on our ranch in Northern California until the beginning of June 2020 and I did my legal work mainly from there. When the plandemic started in 2020, we were both immediately convinced – that something was amiss here. I quickly packed my bags, because I wanted to help shed light on the plandemic in Germany. After all, I had 30 years of experience as a litigator and spent many years studying medical and pharmaceutical law at the University of Göttingen. In addition, I had many contacts from my work in medical law. Dr. WW, whom I trusted at the time, put me in touch with Ms. VF. At the first face-to-face meeting in Berlin, I was bothered by some of her behavior, but I decided to take off my critical glasses, ignore my gut feeling and trust a friend. We agreed to establish the Corona Committee because it was clear in June 2020 that the German Bundestag, which was actually responsible for this, would not start its own investigation, for reasons that were not yet apparent to me at the time. The Corona Committee was to clarify these key questions immediately: 1. How dangerous is the supposedly novel corona virus really? 2. How reliable and suitable is the PCR test for detecting corona infections? 3. How harmful are the Corona measures, i.e. the lockdowns, the mask requirement, social distancing and the threat of so-called vaccinations? Scientists, doctors, economists, lawyers, politicians, etc. should help support us in clarifying the questions. Two German scientists, a professor of finance and an expert in immunology and vaccinations were already part of our circle. Unfortunately, they did not agree with the contracts of VF drawn up by her notary and therefore they left us. I recall that one of them also distrusted VF from the start. We needed replacements quickly. Two years earlier, while working for the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International, I had met law professor Martin Schwab and had been friends with him ever since. He, in turn, had introduced me to two lawyers from Hamburg whom he had promoted. Trusting in Prof. Schwab’s expertise, I asked the two of them if they wanted to move up as a replacement for the scientists in the Corona Committee. Today I know that this was the beginning of the end. Both quickly showed that money meant more to them than clarification and enlightenment. The Corona Committee quickly met with completely unexpected success. Since we conducted the expert surveys in German and English via video-stream, our Friday broadcasts quickly became popular worldwide. Many people had been convinced that we would later use the findings from these interviews as evidence in international damages proceedings such as in class action. We were in the right place at the right time with our work. I was and still am convinced of that. Internally, unfortunately, things looked different. I quickly noticed that VF and the others showed little interest in our work in contrast to myself, who concentrated almost completely on this work. In addition to the interviews in the committee, I gave five international interviews at that time, and thereby, endeavored to provide information about our work worldwide and not just in Germany. After I had learned from critical experts that a PCR test could under no circumstances detect an infection, and it had been deliberately abused here, I published a 50-minute video in German and English in September 2020. There I explained that the Corona measures, which had already led to more and more victims and damage at that time, could be qualified as crimes against humanity, and that it would be best to clarify them legally with the means of Anglo-American law. To my surprise, the video was viewed millions of times before it was suddenly deleted by YouTube/Google. On the basis of this video, the American colleague Robert F. Kennedy jr., whom I first met in Berlin in August 2020, founded the “PCR Test working group” on his platform CHD, with the help of its president Mary Holland. I also belong to this group. Since October 2020, respected scientists, doctors, lawyers, etc. have been meeting there every week to discuss all aspects related to the plandemic. At the same time, I regularly summarized our long interviews at the Corona Committee on Sundays on Roger Bittel’s platform “Bittel.TV”. The enormous popularity of the Corona Committee led to a large number of inquiries as early as August 2020. In particular, small and medium-sized enterprises wanted to know how they could get compensation for the damage suffered as a result of the lockdowns. And fellow lawyers from all over the world wanted to be connected with the experts. At that time, many lawyers still believed that a judicial hearing of evidence with our PCR test experts would quickly bring down the entire panic, based on deception and manipulation. This led to the collection of funds (700 € per person) for a possible class action. The funds are all there, but have been fraudulently diverted to another account. I will report on this in detail elsewhere. Due to my almost 30 years of litigation experience, I was rather sceptical that a solid legal approach would quickly succeed in Germany and also in the rest of the world. Therefore, I advised to conduct damages litigation in an Anglo-American country, where there is the possibility of class actions and a real right of evidence and punitive damages for intentional damages. My international colleagues are working flat out on this. The issue of class action lawsuits is as present as ever and we are convinced that it will ultimately bring success. Part 3 – The end of the Corona Committee – Unfortunate circumstances or a long-planned coup? Dear friends, activists and fellow human beings interested in the truth, in the 3rd part of my personal statement, it will quickly become apparent to you that I was more and more a lone fighter in matters of the Corona Committee and that my co-partners pulled a common string to get rid of me and also to ruin me privately. I share responsibility here. As a human being, but even more so as a lawyer, I should have seen the events coming and prevented them. Back to my account. So, while I was on my way, also with international lawyers, for the CA and putting all my energy into it, strangely enough, the other members didn’t seem to be so aware of the importance of the Corona Committee‘s work. None of them attended the strategy meetings. None of them made any effort to publicize the work of the Committee, especially beyond the borders of Germany. From the end of 2020 onwards, JH and AF in particular were only interested in how they could earn as much money as possible with Corona mandates with their newly founded office community. When, at the end of 2021 / beginning of 2022, together with the group of international lawyers, I conducted the Model Grand Jury investigations with the help of our experts to show that, and how, a legal clarification of the plandemic could work, these lawyers no longer played a role at all. However, the Model Grand Jury Investigation became a success that attracted worldwide attention. The work of the Corona Committee was now so popular that by the end of 2020 we had already received a lot of donations. However, we only needed part of this to pay for our technology, IT, translators and expenses for my office, etc. There was a large amount of money in our donation account. This money was not safe from our point of view. A blocking or seizure of the accounts would have rendered us immediately incapacitated. Therefore, VF and I decided to leave only the amounts directly required for the work of the Corona Committee in the donation account and to keep the funds that were not needed at first safe from possible access. The State Office for Criminal Investigation in Lower Saxony, as I know today, had asked the public prosecutor’s office to investigate VF, RF, AF and JH and a colleague who had temporarily managed the donation account because of suspicious money laundering reports from the banks, which had repeatedly terminated our donation account. These investigations were later discontinued. To make sure that we would not be vulnerable because of the securing of the money, we concluded loan agreements, which were also openly shown in the annual financial statements. Of course, there would have been no point in transferring the loans from one disclosed account to another open account. So we decided to invest them in my German property (as an equivalent value) and in gold as a safe store of value. The house had a value of €1,345,000. We wanted to sell it anyway and look for a new place to live in Germany. Therefore, the money I took out on a loan basis was safe, as I believed at the time. But things turned out differently. I will report on that. In addition, I invested 1.1 million EUR in donations in gold. This was also openly disclosed in the annual financial statements. VF also entered into a contract with Corona Committee to obtain a loan. This withdrawal also served to secure our money. The loan went over € 100,000 which is also reported in the annual financial statements. In July / August 2021, JH and AF suddenly contacted us again to get information about the donations. I suspected that their legal efforts had been unsuccessful. In the meantime, I had learned that they had no structure in their office and, in particular, had not even been able to hire at least one secretary. I hadn’t checked this at the beginning of our collaboration, a mistake on my part in hindsight. Since JH and AF had effectively left the work of the Corona Committee and also because they had recently been working closely with a person who, as I know today, infiltrated the political party “dieBasis” together with a Freemason, we initially refused to provide this information. But in order not to waste energy on avoidable arguments, we finally handed in an overview of income and expenditures. It quickly became clear that they wanted to “hijack” the Corona Committee and at least eliminate me from it. When the attempt failed, JH proposed in a written settlement that he and AF would leave the company if we pay them half of the donations to an account of their mentor, Prof. Dr. Martin Schwab. Of course, VF and I rejected this and asked JH and AF not to show up in the committee anymore. We didn’t hear from them for about a year. At the end of 2021, with my consent and with the help of their notary, VF created a new company for the operation of the Corona Committee. VF and I held a 50 percent stake in this company. This new Corona Committee has its own account, so it no longer has to rely on lawyers’ escrow accounts. All the rights of the old company were also transferred to this new company. I agreed to the contracts submitted to me by VF. At the beginning of 2022, working with VF had become increasingly difficult. That’s why I accepted the offer to participate in the Crimes Against Humanity Tour in the US. This meant that I would spend almost three and a half months traveling through nine U.S. cities and giving lectures with two well-known U.S. scientists, Dr. Judy Mikovits and the economist and expert on technology and transhumanism, Patrick Wood. However, from there I continued all the activities related to the Corona Committee: I continued the interviews via Zoom, gave an average of five interviews per week, participated in the conferences of the PCR Test Working Group and summarised the meetings of the Committee every weekend on Bittel.TV. In addition, I worked with international colleagues to initiate legal proceedings with the aim of large-scale damages lawsuits. At the time, I was on the verge of burnout… After my return from the U.S., I realized that VF’s chaotic incompetence and indifference to our guests, which I had grudgingly accepted until then, had increased even more. That’s why I confronted her in July 2022. I informed her that I would be going back to our ranch in California with my wife and dogs, also to be closer to the relevant legal action, but that I would continue the committee work as usual. Also, I desperately wanted more input from her! Immediately afterwards, as I know today, VF got in touch with JH and AF again, as well as their law firm colleague MT. In August 2022, there was a meeting and a discussion. Following this meeting, the joint public defamation campaign against me started on 9-2-.2022 and criminal charges were filed against me on the same day. I didn’t know anything about that at the time. Due to the coincidence of the date of the “dismissal” and the criminal complaint, it is clear to me today that “the other side” was never interested in resolving the disputes. A week before 9-2-.2022, VF had informed me that there would be no Corona committee broadcast on that day because our TV manager’s wife was going to have her second child. A lie, as I later realized. But I believed that lie and did not appear, VF and WW had – as VF puts it – “a clear shot“ at me. VF appeared in front of the Corona Committee’s camera dramatically dressed in black. She declared, without informing me as her partner, that I was no longer allowed to appear at the Corona Committee. So she decided unilaterally and completely arbitrarily that I was no longer allowed to be present in the Corona Committee that I had shaped until then, in whose company I owned 50 percent then as now! In order to justify her illegal and unlawful actions, she and WW, also in front of the camera, stated that I was to be accused of financial irregularities and that I was otherwise “a loudmouth”. WW was particularly fond of this label. I didn’t want to unnecessarily burden the Corona Committee and its worldwide reputation with internal problems. A vain hope. A short time later, VF, WW, JH, AF and VF’s partner at the time appeared in front of the camera for an hour-long Reiner Fuellmich tribunal. This campaign eventually culminated in several increasingly insane videos from VF claiming that “the children of the committee staff must be starving“ because of me. Apparently completely unhinged, she finally called for a “hunt for me” and crowned this call with a “Halali”, a German hunting call that signals the end of a hunt. Not only I, but also the viewers were shocked, as could be seen from the comments in the chat. The content of the 30-page criminal complaint, which JH also filed on behalf of AF and MT, reads even crazier. JH, AF and MT knew in 2020 that € 700,000 had been secured by me by loan agreement and secured with my property. They also knew that the sale of my house has been planned for a long time and was imminent. Our property was sold on 03/10/2022 for € 1,345,000.00 in our absence through a notary. As mentioned, we have never seen any of this money to this day! How this coup took place, I will explain in the next part. And it gets even worse: After receiving the criminal complaint, I should have been heard, in accordance with the principle audiatur et altera pars. But I was denied this. Today I know the reasons: JH claimed to the prosecution that I was threatening him “with a Winchester”. And because that didn’t seem dangerous enough, he went on to claim that I, as a member of the party “dieBasis”, would radicalize other members and call for violence against him. In addition, I was an anti-Semite and he would feel threatened because of his ethnic origin. Because of these completely fictitious threat scenarios, my wife and I were denied the right to a fair clarification of the situation by the authorities for more than a year. Apparently, the public prosecutor’s office felt pressured by these threat scenarios. JH even told the authorities that the other two plaintiffs would withdraw the criminal complaint if the prosecution granted me a fair hearing. Literally, he writes: “… if Fuellmich or any of the other defendants were given the opportunity to comment before criminal proceedings were initiated, the witnesses (i.e. VF, JH, AF and MT) would refrain from filing the criminal complaint for fear of threats, violence and defamation.” Subsequently, my wife’s private account was seized. When our lawyers asked for my wife to be heard, they were told that they would not receive any information because she was also under investigation. A European arrest warrant was then issued for me on 3-15-2023, of course without me being granted the right to be heard. In the meantime, my wife and I had left for a trip to Peru regarding the class action lawsuit. On the way back we wanted to visit friends in Mexico and fly back to Germany from there. There, we received information from our hometown that the authorities were allegedly looking for me. Unfortunately, the colleagues from my law firm did not receive any information from the authorities about the situation. So we couldn’t really assess the new scenario back home, so we stayed in Mexico for the time being. As a counterpart to the Corona Committee, I now had my own label “ICIC”, with which, as before in the Committee, I interviewed international experts on global crimes against humanity. A small working group from the former Corona Committee had followed me and so we were able to quickly get back to work. Nevertheless, in October 2023, everything plunged into complete chaos again. It ended with the execution of the above-mentioned European arrest warrant against me in Frankfurt, after I had previously been deported from a non-European country (Mexico) under police protection. – A thriller that, as I know today, was anything but a coincidence. I’ll tell you about that in the next episode. As a result, I’ve been sitting in prison for weeks now. The real perpetrators are still free. They also possess the class action lawsuit money and the money from my private home. I can prove that. All documents are safely stored with my legal team. How the “agitators” brought all this to a “successful” conclusion for them, I will report on in the next episode. Source Reiner Füellmich: Press Release From The Defence. Originally published by Elsa at Truth Summit on 23rd December 2023. One could say that the truth is boring – meaning, Reiner said basically the same thing a few days after VF spoke against him as he is saying now, and as is stated in the press release from the defense. There are a couple of further details. They add a tiny bit, but nothing is changed. So here is the press release. On November 17, 2023 the Göttingen public prosecutor’s office brought charges against Dr. Reiner Füellmich on the basis of a criminal complaint filed by former shareholders without the defense having prior access to all volumes of the investigation file or the opportunity to comment. An interrogation of the accused pursuant to Section 163a of the German Code of Criminal Procedure (StPO) was also not conducted before the indictment was filed. Likewise, the witnesses named predominantly in the indictment were not questioned. On the one hand, the sum of €700,000 is at issue, which is already the subject of the arrest warrant. However, the basis for the payment of the €700,000 were two loan agreements also signed by Viviane Fischer (one dated November 6, 2020 for €200,000 and one dated May 14, 2021 for €500,000). The public prosecutor’s office incorrectly assumed at the time of the indictment that both loan agreements involved inadmissible self-dealing. However, according to the complete founding minutes of July 9, 2020 all four shareholders were appointed as managing directors with sole power of representation, so that Viviane Fischer was able to effectively represent the Corona-Committee-Entrepreneurial-company-in-formation alone in both loan agreements. At the time, rumors were circulating about the seizure of accounts at MWGFD; in fact, accounts were seized from the prominent member Prof. Dr. Hockertz, as well as subsequently from other doctors who were prosecuted under criminal law on the subject of the corona measures, and finally, as the most prominent example, from Michael Ballweg, who was also remanded in custody for 9 months. The donations should therefore be invested in sustainable stores of value, such as gold or real estate. The Corona Committee bought around 1 million worth of gold, which is still stored securely at Degussa. Reiner Füellmich’s property was intended as the equivalent value for the loan amount of € 700,000. At the time of the sale on October 3, 2022, the property was unencumbered and the € 700,000 was to be repaid to the Corona Committee from the purchase price of € 1,345,000. However, this was prevented until today by the entry of a land charge on November 18, 2022, i.e. one and a half months later – in our opinion unlawful – and the payment of an amount of € 1,158,250 in favor of the complainant Marcel Templin. This matter must be clarified, also by the public prosecutor’s office. It is irrelevant whether amounts were spent on redesigning the garden of the property, as this directly benefited the increase in value and thus the achievement of a higher purchase price. The indictment also alleges payments made by the Corona Committee to Reiner Füellmich’s law firm in the amount of €25,000 per month plus VAT in the period from January 1, 2021 to July 31, 2022. According to the indictment, these funds were used up for wage and salary payments and social security contributions for the employees of his law firm. The public prosecutor’s office fails to recognize that the employees of Füellmich’s law firm provided a service in return for these monthly payments to the Corona Committee. For two years, they were almost exclusively occupied with answering inquiries to the Corona Committee. Over 300,000 emails were answered, hundreds to thousands of telephone calls were made and thousands of letters were answered. Due to the sheer volume of emails, a new IT system also had to be purchased. This work, which was absolutely essential for the Committee’s continued existence, was not carried out at the Committee’s headquarters in Berlin. Communication with the supporters of the Corona Committee included initial legal advice for those seeking help, the acquisition of interview partners, the selection of scientists and other experts, who ultimately had their say at the weekly meetings. If this communication had not taken place, the Corona Committee could have ceased its work shortly after it was set up. The services provided by the employees of the Füellmich law firm were therefore part of the committee’s corporate purpose. The witnesses named by the public prosecutor in the indictment for this set of crimes were not heard before the indictment was filed, which is unusual. Source Truth Summit Elsa from the Truth Summit adds – PS. To donate for legal and other expenses, here is the link: https://www.givesendgo.com/GBBX2 https://expose-news.com/2023/12/27/update-reiner-fuellmich-speaks-out-his-personal-statement-press-release-from-the-defence/
    EXPOSE-NEWS.COM
    Update: Reiner Füellmich Speaks Out. His Personal Statement & Press Release From The Defence.
    Dr Reiner Füellmich has been imprisoned for almost 11 weeks now. He has written his own personal account, part one of which was read aloud on Bittel TV and translated. He had said “It isn’t o…
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  • ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 84: Gaza at ‘catastrophic threshold’ of famine, West Bank marks ‘deadliest year on record’ for Palestinian children
    Israel faces growing tensions between the war cabinet and the far-right coalition government as Egypt presents a ceasefire proposal. Meanwhile, Israeli forces kill at least three Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

    Mondoweiss Palestine BureauDecember 29, 2023
    People struggle to recover bodies and survivors from under the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli airstrike on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, December 28, 2023. (Photo: by Bashar Taleb/APA Images)
    People struggle to recover bodies and survivors from under the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli airstrike on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, December 28, 2023. (Photo: by Bashar Taleb/APA Images)
    Casualties:

    21,507 killed* and at least 55,915 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
    316 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
    *This figure is the latest confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health as of December 29. Due to breakdowns in communication networks within the Gaza Strip, the Ministry of Health in Gaza has been unable to regularly and accurately update its tolls since mid-November. Some rights groups put the death toll number closer to 30,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.

    Key Developments

    Deadly airstrikes pummel several areas across Gaza, killing 187 people in 24 hours.
    Fighting continues to rage on between Israeli ground troops and Palestinian armed groups, as Israeli army announces an expansion of operations in Khan Younis.
    U.N. says hunger in Gaza has passed “catastrophic threshold,” as UNRWA estimates 40 percent of the population is at risk of famine while aid barely trickles in.
    Health and human rights groups denounce Israel’s continued targeting of Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis and Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia amid systematic attacks on the health care system in Gaza.
    Palestinians who were detained in northern Gaza report threats, violence, and humiliation at the hands of Israeli forces.
    Hamas delegation heads to Cairo on Friday to discuss Egyptian proposal for ceasefire, reiterates call for complete cessation of Israeli aggression in Gaza, and for Palestinians to determine the shape of their own political future.
    Israeli leadership torn between war cabinet and far-right elements of coalition government, who refuse to consider possibility of Palestinian Authority involvement in Gaza.
    Leaked Israeli High Court draft ruling indicates one of most contested clauses of Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul could be struck down, reigniting internal Israeli disputes.
    Thousands of demonstrators call for release of hostages in Jerusalem i culmination of five days of protests, Israeli army releases probe into killing of three Israeli hostages by own soldiers.
    Israel continues to shell southern Lebanon and Syria, armed groups in neighboring countries respond.
    U.S. forces intercept Yemeni drone and missile in Red Sea.
    Israeli forces shoot and kill a Palestinian man allegedly responsible for stabbing attack at checkpoint near Jerusalem on Thursday, raids home and detains relatives.
    Palestinian killed by Israeli forces in southern occupied West Bank on Friday following alleged car-ramming attack.
    Israeli forces detain more than 15 Palestinians during violent overnight raids, as U.N. raises the alarm about the rising violence in the occupied West Bank.
    Peace Now warns Israel is expanding illegal settlements in northern and southern West Bank “in the shadow of war.”
    Hundreds of protesters in Times Square hold mock funeral procession on Thursday to denounce killing of thousands of Palestinian children by Israeli forces in Gaza.
    Gaza continues to suffer

    Twelve weeks into the Israeli rampage in the Gaza Strip, airstrikes continue to flatten the small Palestinian territory, killing dozens as fighting rages on between Israeli ground forces and Palestinian resistance fighters.

    Deadly Israeli airstrikes were reported since Thursday afternoon in Rafah and Khan Younis in southern Gaza, as well as in the Nuseirat, al-Bureij, and al-Maghazi refugee camps in central Gaza, and in Beit Hanoun and the Gaza City neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan in northern Gaza.

    The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza reported at midday on Friday that at least 187 people had been killed and 312 wounded in the span of 24 hours, raising the total toll to at least 21,507 killed and at least 55,915 wounded in the Gaza Strip since October 7.

    Meanwhile, Palestinian groups reported ongoing fighting in the area of Khan Younis, Khuza’a, al-Bureij, Tal al-Zaatar, and various areas in Gaza City – contradicting Israeli claims that the northern Gaza Strip is under full army control.

    The Israeli army has meanwhile announced its plans to expand its operations in Khan Younis, where tens of thousands of internally displaced civilians have fled since October. More than 1.9 million internally displaced Palestinians in what was already one of the most densely populated areas on earth continue to be squeezed into ever tinier slivers of land, with an estimated 100,000 people fleeing to Rafah in recent days alone.

    Israel confirmed the death of one Israeli soldier on Thursday, bringing the official toll of the ground invasion in Gaza to 168 soldiers — although a government gag order prevents Israeli media from reporting on the full scope of military casualties.

    The humanitarian catastrophe Israel has deliberately inflicted on Gaza through its refusal to allow in sufficient aid and its destruction of essential infrastructure has begun to affect its own troops as well. At least one soldier has died as a result of a fungal infection likely due to exposure to sewage leaks, with Israeli media reporting that more soldiers could also suffer from similar infections.

    The impact on Israeli troops pales in comparison to the devastation wrought on Palestinians, who are starving and suffering from a host of injuries and preventable illnesses amid a complete collapse of the medical system.

    The Gaza Ministry of Health announced that 20 patients were scheduled to leave Gaza on Friday to receive medical treatment in Egypt, but noted that many more were in dire need of care they were unable to receive in the bombarded enclave. “Our urgent priority is to evacuate for treatment abroad 5,000 wounded with serious and complex cases to save their lives,” Gaza Ministry of Health spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said.

    The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that only 76 trucks of aid were allowed into the Gaza Strip on Thursday, far below the pre-October 7 average of 500 trucks a day.

    “You think getting aid into Gaza is easy? Think again,” U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths posted on X on Friday, listing stringent inspections, bombardments, damaged roads, and desperate civilians crammed into smaller and smaller areas as only some of the obstacles making the delivery of these small amounts of food, medicine, and other essential items even more difficult.

    On Friday morning, an UNRWA official reported that Israeli forces fired at an aid convoy in northern Gaza, even as it was driving on “a route designated by the Israeli army,” damaging one vehicle.

    According to UNRWA, 40 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants are “at risk of famine.” The U.N. has meanwhile activated a Famine Review Committee for Gaza “due to evidence surpassing the acute food insecurity Phase 5,” described as the “catastrophic threshold.”

    Israel has meanwhile continued to target Palestinian health facilities and workers, notably the Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis and Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, prompting condemnation from Palestinian human rights organizations.

    A Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedic who was detained by Israeli forces in Jabalia said soldiers held him and other paramedics for hours with their hands tied behind their backs, and heavily beat them, including on their heads and “sensitive areas,” and that one of his colleagues was repeatedly hit with rocks. He added that Israeli bulldozers ran over ambulances, destroying them completely. PRCS says at least eight of its staff members are still detained by Israeli forces.

    Al-Qidra said on Thursday that Israel was detaining at least 99 health personnel in “harsh conditions of torture, starvation, and exposure to extreme cold.”

    The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) meanwhile shared the testimony of one of its researchers, Ayman Lubbad, who was detained by Israeli forces for a week earlier this month.

    “Men and boys as young as 14 were instructed to strip and kneel in the street […] They inappropriately photographed us while we were half-naked and forced some of us to dance,” Lubbad said. “Upon learning that I work for a human rights organization, the interrogator threateningly said: ‘I will teach you your rights very well in prison.’”

    Egyptian proposal to be discussed amid internal Israeli turmoil

    Amid the carnage, Egypt reiterated on Thursday that it was awaiting responses to its framework proposal to obtain a ceasefire in Gaza, a hostage swap agreement, and map out future Palestinian governance after the war.

    A Hamas delegation was due in Cairo on Friday to discuss the proposal. In a press conference on Thursday, the Palestinian group said it was open “to any ideas or proposals to stop the aggression completely and finally on our people in the Gaza Strip,” but that there would be no deal to release Israeli hostages until Israeli pummeling of Gaza ceased.

    It nonetheless stressed that “the management of Palestinian affairs is a Palestinian internal decision, and it is the decision of the Palestinian people alone, and our people will not accept a leadership that comes to them on the back of a Zionist or American tank.”

    “Our people today want a national leadership that carries the project of liberation and commits to resistance in all its forms to achieve national goals,” Hamas added.

    Meanwhile, Israeli Finance Minister and far-right extremist settler Bezalel Smotrich dug in his heels on Friday following reports that the U.S. was pressuring Tel Aviv to release Palestinian Authority tax revenue it has been withholding since October 7.

    Because Israel controls all international borders with the occupied Palestinian territories, it collects customs and other forms of revenue on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, the nominal political body operating in the occupied West Bank. However, Israel has repeatedly withheld these taxes over the years as a punitive tactic, regardless of whether the P.A. is involved.

    “As long as I am Finance Minister, not a single shekel will go to the Nazi terrorists in Gaza,” Smotrich wrote on X.

    Smotrich is involved in growing tensions within Israeli leadership, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been facing pressure from the war cabinet — which includes himself, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and opposition leader Benny Gantz — and his far-right coalition government. A war cabinet meeting that had been scheduled for Thursday to discuss scenarios for “the day after” the war was postponed after Smotrich opposed its discussion of any future in which the PA might play a role.

    Netanyahu was facing a slew of corruption charges and internal dissent due to his attempt to hijack the judicial system before the war.

    The Israeli High Court is reportedly set to strike down a key part of the prime minister’s controversial judicial overhaul, according to a draft ruling leaked on Thursday, bringing back to the fore a national debate that had been effectively silenced since October 7.

    Netanyahu is now also facing pressure for his handling of the hostage situation. Thousands of protesters rallied in Jerusalem on Thursday night, calling for the release of hostages.

    An estimated 130 people are still believed to be held by Hamas and other Palestinian groups in Gaza as bargaining chips to obtain the release of thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. While 105 hostages were released during a six-day truce in November, Israel has since failed to release more hostages through combat operations.

    The Israeli army released on Thursday the results of its internal investigation into the killing of three Israeli hostages by Israeli forces earlier this month while they were waving a white flag. The probe found that soldiers shot at the hostages who were calling for help, despite their commander having ordered them not to shoot. The Times of Israel nevertheless reported that “the soldiers involved in the incident were not expected to be dismissed or to stand trial due to their actions.”

    ‘Deadliest year on record’ for children in the West Bank

    At least three Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since Thursday, as confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinians were reported in several areas during military raids.

    A Palestinian man identified as Ahmad Alyan was killed after allegedly carrying out a stabbing attack at the Israeli military checkpoint of Mizmoria between Jerusalem and Bethlehem on Thursday night, reportedly injuring two Israeli police officers. Israeli forces later raided his family’s home in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukaber, detaining his parents and sister.

    An alleged car-ramming attack took place near the illegal Israeli settlement of Otniel on Friday afternoon, with the driver killed on the spot by Israeli forces. The P.A. Ministry of Health identified the driver as Amr Abdel Fattah Abu Hussein, and said he was killed east of the Palestinian town of Dura.

    Another Palestinian, identified as 38-year-old Muhammad Sayel Al-Jundi from the town of Yatta, was shot and killed by Israeli forces at a checkpoint between Hebron and Bethlehem on Thursday night. WAFA news agency did not provide more detail on the circumstances surrounding his death.

    Israeli forces have continued to violently raid Palestinian towns and villages across the West Bank, provoking clashes in al-Faraa refugee camp, Balata refugee camp, Qalqilya, Rafat, Kafr Aqab, and Ain al-Sultan refugee camp.

    At least three Palestinians were wounded during the Israeli raid in al-Faraa, and another five were detained, in addition to 14 other Palestinians detained overnight across the occupied West Bank. Israeli forces also seized children’s toys in a raid in the southern city of Hebron, WAFA reported.

    In East Jerusalem, Israeli forces once again fired rubber-coated metal bullets, tear gas, and skunk water at worshippers seeking to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday.

    The spike in violent Israeli repression in the West Bank since October 7 has led the UN to raise the alarm in a report released on Thursday.

    “The use of military tactics means and weapons in law enforcement contexts, the use of unnecessary or disproportionate force, and the enforcement of broad, arbitrary and discriminatory movement restrictions that affect Palestinians are extremely troubling,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said. “The violations documented in this report repeat the pattern and nature of violations reported in the past in the context of the long-standing Israeli occupation of the West Bank. However, the intensity of the violence and repression is something that has not been seen in years.”

    UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Adele Khodr meanwhile said on Thursday that 2023 was the “deadliest year on record for children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” with 83 children killed since October 7 alone.

    “Children living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have been experiencing grinding violence for many years, yet the intensity of that violence has dramatically increased,” Khodr said. “The suffering of children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, must not fade into the background of the current conflict — it is part of it.”

    As Israeli state violence rages on, the settler colonial enterprise continues advancing in violation of international law. Israeli settlers expanded a road in the World Heritage site of Battir near Bethlehem on Thursday, seeking to further entrench a settler outpost built in the area in recent years.

    Peace Now released a new report on Thursday on the expansion of the Battir outpost, as well as the expansion of the Homesh settlement in the northern West Bank “in the shadow of war.”

    “While Israel is at war, Smotrich and his colleagues are asserting facts on the ground that may open up another front in the West Bank,” Peace Now wrote. “If we don’t stop the dream of settlement in the northern West Bank and in Battir, we will wake up to the nightmare of settlements in the Gaza Strip.”

    Before you go - We need your help. Mainstream media’s wilful complicity in the genocide of Palestinian people is a reminder of just how vital our work at Mondoweiss is. This article and our extensive coverage since October 7 have been made possible by readers like you who donate to keep our reporting free and independent.

    With your support, we will continue covering the ongoing events in Gaza and across Palestine, as well as amplifying the Palestine movement worldwide. Together, we will make sure to keep reporting Palestinian stories, even when the rest of the world looks away.

    Support our critical work with a donation today.

    https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/operation-al-aqsa-flood-day-84-gaza-at-catastrophic-threshold-of-famine-west-bank-marks-deadliest-year-on-record-for-palestinian-children/
    ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 84: Gaza at ‘catastrophic threshold’ of famine, West Bank marks ‘deadliest year on record’ for Palestinian children Israel faces growing tensions between the war cabinet and the far-right coalition government as Egypt presents a ceasefire proposal. Meanwhile, Israeli forces kill at least three Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Mondoweiss Palestine BureauDecember 29, 2023 People struggle to recover bodies and survivors from under the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli airstrike on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, December 28, 2023. (Photo: by Bashar Taleb/APA Images) People struggle to recover bodies and survivors from under the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli airstrike on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, December 28, 2023. (Photo: by Bashar Taleb/APA Images) Casualties: 21,507 killed* and at least 55,915 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 316 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. *This figure is the latest confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health as of December 29. Due to breakdowns in communication networks within the Gaza Strip, the Ministry of Health in Gaza has been unable to regularly and accurately update its tolls since mid-November. Some rights groups put the death toll number closer to 30,000 when accounting for those presumed dead. Key Developments Deadly airstrikes pummel several areas across Gaza, killing 187 people in 24 hours. Fighting continues to rage on between Israeli ground troops and Palestinian armed groups, as Israeli army announces an expansion of operations in Khan Younis. U.N. says hunger in Gaza has passed “catastrophic threshold,” as UNRWA estimates 40 percent of the population is at risk of famine while aid barely trickles in. Health and human rights groups denounce Israel’s continued targeting of Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis and Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia amid systematic attacks on the health care system in Gaza. Palestinians who were detained in northern Gaza report threats, violence, and humiliation at the hands of Israeli forces. Hamas delegation heads to Cairo on Friday to discuss Egyptian proposal for ceasefire, reiterates call for complete cessation of Israeli aggression in Gaza, and for Palestinians to determine the shape of their own political future. Israeli leadership torn between war cabinet and far-right elements of coalition government, who refuse to consider possibility of Palestinian Authority involvement in Gaza. Leaked Israeli High Court draft ruling indicates one of most contested clauses of Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul could be struck down, reigniting internal Israeli disputes. Thousands of demonstrators call for release of hostages in Jerusalem i culmination of five days of protests, Israeli army releases probe into killing of three Israeli hostages by own soldiers. Israel continues to shell southern Lebanon and Syria, armed groups in neighboring countries respond. U.S. forces intercept Yemeni drone and missile in Red Sea. Israeli forces shoot and kill a Palestinian man allegedly responsible for stabbing attack at checkpoint near Jerusalem on Thursday, raids home and detains relatives. Palestinian killed by Israeli forces in southern occupied West Bank on Friday following alleged car-ramming attack. Israeli forces detain more than 15 Palestinians during violent overnight raids, as U.N. raises the alarm about the rising violence in the occupied West Bank. Peace Now warns Israel is expanding illegal settlements in northern and southern West Bank “in the shadow of war.” Hundreds of protesters in Times Square hold mock funeral procession on Thursday to denounce killing of thousands of Palestinian children by Israeli forces in Gaza. Gaza continues to suffer Twelve weeks into the Israeli rampage in the Gaza Strip, airstrikes continue to flatten the small Palestinian territory, killing dozens as fighting rages on between Israeli ground forces and Palestinian resistance fighters. Deadly Israeli airstrikes were reported since Thursday afternoon in Rafah and Khan Younis in southern Gaza, as well as in the Nuseirat, al-Bureij, and al-Maghazi refugee camps in central Gaza, and in Beit Hanoun and the Gaza City neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan in northern Gaza. The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza reported at midday on Friday that at least 187 people had been killed and 312 wounded in the span of 24 hours, raising the total toll to at least 21,507 killed and at least 55,915 wounded in the Gaza Strip since October 7. Meanwhile, Palestinian groups reported ongoing fighting in the area of Khan Younis, Khuza’a, al-Bureij, Tal al-Zaatar, and various areas in Gaza City – contradicting Israeli claims that the northern Gaza Strip is under full army control. The Israeli army has meanwhile announced its plans to expand its operations in Khan Younis, where tens of thousands of internally displaced civilians have fled since October. More than 1.9 million internally displaced Palestinians in what was already one of the most densely populated areas on earth continue to be squeezed into ever tinier slivers of land, with an estimated 100,000 people fleeing to Rafah in recent days alone. Israel confirmed the death of one Israeli soldier on Thursday, bringing the official toll of the ground invasion in Gaza to 168 soldiers — although a government gag order prevents Israeli media from reporting on the full scope of military casualties. The humanitarian catastrophe Israel has deliberately inflicted on Gaza through its refusal to allow in sufficient aid and its destruction of essential infrastructure has begun to affect its own troops as well. At least one soldier has died as a result of a fungal infection likely due to exposure to sewage leaks, with Israeli media reporting that more soldiers could also suffer from similar infections. The impact on Israeli troops pales in comparison to the devastation wrought on Palestinians, who are starving and suffering from a host of injuries and preventable illnesses amid a complete collapse of the medical system. The Gaza Ministry of Health announced that 20 patients were scheduled to leave Gaza on Friday to receive medical treatment in Egypt, but noted that many more were in dire need of care they were unable to receive in the bombarded enclave. “Our urgent priority is to evacuate for treatment abroad 5,000 wounded with serious and complex cases to save their lives,” Gaza Ministry of Health spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that only 76 trucks of aid were allowed into the Gaza Strip on Thursday, far below the pre-October 7 average of 500 trucks a day. “You think getting aid into Gaza is easy? Think again,” U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths posted on X on Friday, listing stringent inspections, bombardments, damaged roads, and desperate civilians crammed into smaller and smaller areas as only some of the obstacles making the delivery of these small amounts of food, medicine, and other essential items even more difficult. On Friday morning, an UNRWA official reported that Israeli forces fired at an aid convoy in northern Gaza, even as it was driving on “a route designated by the Israeli army,” damaging one vehicle. According to UNRWA, 40 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants are “at risk of famine.” The U.N. has meanwhile activated a Famine Review Committee for Gaza “due to evidence surpassing the acute food insecurity Phase 5,” described as the “catastrophic threshold.” Israel has meanwhile continued to target Palestinian health facilities and workers, notably the Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis and Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, prompting condemnation from Palestinian human rights organizations. A Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedic who was detained by Israeli forces in Jabalia said soldiers held him and other paramedics for hours with their hands tied behind their backs, and heavily beat them, including on their heads and “sensitive areas,” and that one of his colleagues was repeatedly hit with rocks. He added that Israeli bulldozers ran over ambulances, destroying them completely. PRCS says at least eight of its staff members are still detained by Israeli forces. Al-Qidra said on Thursday that Israel was detaining at least 99 health personnel in “harsh conditions of torture, starvation, and exposure to extreme cold.” The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) meanwhile shared the testimony of one of its researchers, Ayman Lubbad, who was detained by Israeli forces for a week earlier this month. “Men and boys as young as 14 were instructed to strip and kneel in the street […] They inappropriately photographed us while we were half-naked and forced some of us to dance,” Lubbad said. “Upon learning that I work for a human rights organization, the interrogator threateningly said: ‘I will teach you your rights very well in prison.’” Egyptian proposal to be discussed amid internal Israeli turmoil Amid the carnage, Egypt reiterated on Thursday that it was awaiting responses to its framework proposal to obtain a ceasefire in Gaza, a hostage swap agreement, and map out future Palestinian governance after the war. A Hamas delegation was due in Cairo on Friday to discuss the proposal. In a press conference on Thursday, the Palestinian group said it was open “to any ideas or proposals to stop the aggression completely and finally on our people in the Gaza Strip,” but that there would be no deal to release Israeli hostages until Israeli pummeling of Gaza ceased. It nonetheless stressed that “the management of Palestinian affairs is a Palestinian internal decision, and it is the decision of the Palestinian people alone, and our people will not accept a leadership that comes to them on the back of a Zionist or American tank.” “Our people today want a national leadership that carries the project of liberation and commits to resistance in all its forms to achieve national goals,” Hamas added. Meanwhile, Israeli Finance Minister and far-right extremist settler Bezalel Smotrich dug in his heels on Friday following reports that the U.S. was pressuring Tel Aviv to release Palestinian Authority tax revenue it has been withholding since October 7. Because Israel controls all international borders with the occupied Palestinian territories, it collects customs and other forms of revenue on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, the nominal political body operating in the occupied West Bank. However, Israel has repeatedly withheld these taxes over the years as a punitive tactic, regardless of whether the P.A. is involved. “As long as I am Finance Minister, not a single shekel will go to the Nazi terrorists in Gaza,” Smotrich wrote on X. Smotrich is involved in growing tensions within Israeli leadership, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been facing pressure from the war cabinet — which includes himself, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and opposition leader Benny Gantz — and his far-right coalition government. A war cabinet meeting that had been scheduled for Thursday to discuss scenarios for “the day after” the war was postponed after Smotrich opposed its discussion of any future in which the PA might play a role. Netanyahu was facing a slew of corruption charges and internal dissent due to his attempt to hijack the judicial system before the war. The Israeli High Court is reportedly set to strike down a key part of the prime minister’s controversial judicial overhaul, according to a draft ruling leaked on Thursday, bringing back to the fore a national debate that had been effectively silenced since October 7. Netanyahu is now also facing pressure for his handling of the hostage situation. Thousands of protesters rallied in Jerusalem on Thursday night, calling for the release of hostages. An estimated 130 people are still believed to be held by Hamas and other Palestinian groups in Gaza as bargaining chips to obtain the release of thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. While 105 hostages were released during a six-day truce in November, Israel has since failed to release more hostages through combat operations. The Israeli army released on Thursday the results of its internal investigation into the killing of three Israeli hostages by Israeli forces earlier this month while they were waving a white flag. The probe found that soldiers shot at the hostages who were calling for help, despite their commander having ordered them not to shoot. The Times of Israel nevertheless reported that “the soldiers involved in the incident were not expected to be dismissed or to stand trial due to their actions.” ‘Deadliest year on record’ for children in the West Bank At least three Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since Thursday, as confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinians were reported in several areas during military raids. A Palestinian man identified as Ahmad Alyan was killed after allegedly carrying out a stabbing attack at the Israeli military checkpoint of Mizmoria between Jerusalem and Bethlehem on Thursday night, reportedly injuring two Israeli police officers. Israeli forces later raided his family’s home in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukaber, detaining his parents and sister. An alleged car-ramming attack took place near the illegal Israeli settlement of Otniel on Friday afternoon, with the driver killed on the spot by Israeli forces. The P.A. Ministry of Health identified the driver as Amr Abdel Fattah Abu Hussein, and said he was killed east of the Palestinian town of Dura. Another Palestinian, identified as 38-year-old Muhammad Sayel Al-Jundi from the town of Yatta, was shot and killed by Israeli forces at a checkpoint between Hebron and Bethlehem on Thursday night. WAFA news agency did not provide more detail on the circumstances surrounding his death. Israeli forces have continued to violently raid Palestinian towns and villages across the West Bank, provoking clashes in al-Faraa refugee camp, Balata refugee camp, Qalqilya, Rafat, Kafr Aqab, and Ain al-Sultan refugee camp. At least three Palestinians were wounded during the Israeli raid in al-Faraa, and another five were detained, in addition to 14 other Palestinians detained overnight across the occupied West Bank. Israeli forces also seized children’s toys in a raid in the southern city of Hebron, WAFA reported. In East Jerusalem, Israeli forces once again fired rubber-coated metal bullets, tear gas, and skunk water at worshippers seeking to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday. The spike in violent Israeli repression in the West Bank since October 7 has led the UN to raise the alarm in a report released on Thursday. “The use of military tactics means and weapons in law enforcement contexts, the use of unnecessary or disproportionate force, and the enforcement of broad, arbitrary and discriminatory movement restrictions that affect Palestinians are extremely troubling,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said. “The violations documented in this report repeat the pattern and nature of violations reported in the past in the context of the long-standing Israeli occupation of the West Bank. However, the intensity of the violence and repression is something that has not been seen in years.” UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Adele Khodr meanwhile said on Thursday that 2023 was the “deadliest year on record for children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” with 83 children killed since October 7 alone. “Children living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have been experiencing grinding violence for many years, yet the intensity of that violence has dramatically increased,” Khodr said. “The suffering of children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, must not fade into the background of the current conflict — it is part of it.” As Israeli state violence rages on, the settler colonial enterprise continues advancing in violation of international law. Israeli settlers expanded a road in the World Heritage site of Battir near Bethlehem on Thursday, seeking to further entrench a settler outpost built in the area in recent years. Peace Now released a new report on Thursday on the expansion of the Battir outpost, as well as the expansion of the Homesh settlement in the northern West Bank “in the shadow of war.” “While Israel is at war, Smotrich and his colleagues are asserting facts on the ground that may open up another front in the West Bank,” Peace Now wrote. “If we don’t stop the dream of settlement in the northern West Bank and in Battir, we will wake up to the nightmare of settlements in the Gaza Strip.” Before you go - We need your help. Mainstream media’s wilful complicity in the genocide of Palestinian people is a reminder of just how vital our work at Mondoweiss is. This article and our extensive coverage since October 7 have been made possible by readers like you who donate to keep our reporting free and independent. With your support, we will continue covering the ongoing events in Gaza and across Palestine, as well as amplifying the Palestine movement worldwide. Together, we will make sure to keep reporting Palestinian stories, even when the rest of the world looks away. Support our critical work with a donation today. https://mondoweiss.net/2023/12/operation-al-aqsa-flood-day-84-gaza-at-catastrophic-threshold-of-famine-west-bank-marks-deadliest-year-on-record-for-palestinian-children/
    MONDOWEISS.NET
    ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 84: Gaza at ‘catastrophic threshold’ of famine, West Bank marks ‘deadliest year on record’ for Palestinian children
    Israel faces growing tensions between the war cabinet and the far-right coalition government as Egypt presents a ceasefire proposal. Meanwhile, Israeli forces kill at least three Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
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  • November 16: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 41
    Humanitarian & fuel updates, hospital crises, evacuation update, West Bank & Israel news, international community actions, and more

    Kathryn Shihadah November 16, 2023
    November 16: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 41
    Palestinians walk through the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City (photo)
    Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here. For more news, go here and here. Live broadcast news from the region is here.

    Some people are led to be skeptical of the Al Jazeera news network. However, the network has won several Emmys, a Peabody and the Overseas Press Association’s Edward R. Murrow award, among many other honors. The New York Times reports that “its reporting hews to international journalistic standards and provides a unique view on events in the Middle East.” it’s important to remember that all news sources may potentially have bias. For example, CNN uses anchors who used to work for the Israel Lobby, who have lifelong attachment to Israel, and who often exhibit pro-Israel spin and omission in their broadcasts. Similarly, Fox News is strongly influenced by Rupert Murdoch, who has a similarly strong attachment to Israel, and who may have fired Tucker Carlson, the network’s most popular host, in part due to the host’s opposition to war and his pattern of failing to exhibit sufficient devotion to Israel).

    Latest statistics:

    Palestinian death toll: 11,196* (10,999 in Gaza** (including at least 4,707 children and 3,155 women), and at least 197 in the West Bank). *IAK does not yet include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile is being disputed; although much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, experts are still looking into the incident. Israel is blocking an international investigation.

    Palestinian injuries: 30,076** (including at least 29,000 in Gaza** and 2,750 in the West Bank). **NOTE: it is impossible to offer an accurate number of injuries in Gaza due to the ongoing bombardment and communication disruption. The Associated Press has reported ~32,000 in Gaza, while the UN number is somewhat lower. Our total for Gaza and the West Bank is based on the conservative figure.

    It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties. About 1.6 million people have been displaced; 3,640 are missing (1,770 children) and presumed to be under rubble.

    Israel has now killed more Palestinians in a little over a month than in all the previous 22 years combined.

    Reported Israeli death toll has been reduced to ~1,200*** (The Israeli spokesman said the original figure of deaths on March 7 was an “initial estimate” – killed in West Bank, 53 in Gaza), including 32 Americans, and ~5,400 injured). The names of the 1,175 identified (about 33 of them children) are here.

    ***NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel may have been caused by Israeli soldiers; additionally, since Israel has a policy of universal conscription, it is unknown how many of those attending the outdoor rave a few miles from Gaza on stolen Palestinian land were Israeli soldiers.

    Hover over each bar for exact numbers.
    Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org

    Humanitarian aid: Since 21 October, 1,139 trucks carrying mainly medicines, food and water have entered Gaza via the Rafah crossing with Egypt, representing a fraction of the needs. Due to the absence of fuel, on 14 November, UNRWA’s solid waste removal services began shutting down, posing an environmental hazard, with about 400 tons of rubbish per day accumulating in overcrowded camps and IDP shelters.

    Fuel to Gaza: On 15 November, some 23,000 litres of fuel entered Gaza from Egypt, the first such delivery since 7 October. The Israeli authorities have restricted the use of this fuel only to use for UNRWA trucks distributing aid. The entry of fuel for all other purposes remains banned including for hospital generators and water and sanitation facilities. Given UNRWA requires about 160,000 litres of fuel per day to run basic humanitarian operations, it has had to halt key services. The small amount that entered Gaza was too late in the day to refuel the trucks for aid delivery.

    Deadly attacks over the past 24 hours included: on 14 November, in the afternoon, airstrikes reportedly hit Al Mohophin School, in Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, Gaza city, killing 17 people; the same day, at about 20:30, airstrikes reportedly hit a residential building in As Saftawi area, north of Gaza city, killing 13 people, including six women; on midday 14 November, airstrikes reportedly hit a building in Al Qarara, east of Khan Yunis, killing nine people; on 15 November, at around midday, airstrikes reportedly hit As Salhi Towers area, in Nuseirat, killing 14 people.

    Propaganda photo, then a bullet to the head: The Israeli army released a propaganda photo of one of its soldiers helping an elderly Palestinian man with a walking stick in an attempt to showcase its “safe corridor” for civilians fleeing northern Gaza. Shortly afterwards, 79-year-old Bashir Hajji was executed in cold blood by Israeli soldiers, according to Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

    Hajji’s granddaughter, Hala Hajji, told the Euro-Med Monitor team that he was executed after the photo was taken with one bullet to the head and back. “He died tired, cold, thirsty & hungry,” she wrote in a post on Instagram, confirming her grandfather’s death.

    OCHA reports arrests, beatings on evacuation route: Those fleeing to southern Gaza along the so-called safe “corridors” established by Israeli forces face arrest and the UN has received reports of beatings and people being stripped of their clothes by Israeli soldiers. (02:57 GMT) Palestinians fleeing south are “reporting the presence of dead bodies in the streets”.

    New evacuation orders in southern Gaza: The Israeli army dropped leaflets last night and in the early hours of this morning ordering residents on the eastern side of Khan Younis, close to the Israel border, to move to the western side because it is “safe.”

    Khan Younis is located in the southern half of the Gaza Strip. Tens of thousands of people displaced from the north have already sought refuge there in schools and tents, causing severe overcrowding amid shortages of food and water.

    RECOMMENDED READING: South Africa: World must urge Israel to stop ‘crime against humanity’ in Gaza

    Israeli troops brought boxes with them into Al Shifa Hospital, produced a weapons cache: When Israeli troops entered the hospital, they brought in boxes marked “baby food” and “medical supplies,” then later released a video it said showed some of the materials it allegedly recovered inside the hospital, including automatic weapons, grenades, ammunition and flak jackets.
    In one hospital department, “the soldiers [allegedly] located an operational command centre and technological assets belonging to Hamas, indicating that the terrorist organization uses the hospital for terrorist purposes,” an Israeli military statement said. According to a video released on X (see below), they found a laptop.
    There is no indication that Israeli troops’ boxes were inspected before they entered the hospital, or that any third party accompanied them on their inspection.
    Israeli army deletes, reposts video allegedly inside al-Shifa Hospital: According to the Israeli publication Haaretz, the Israeli military had taken down a social media post uploaded on X on Thursday, which showed what Israel claimed was proof of weapons being kept inside Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital. The Israeli military did not publish any explanation for the deletion of the post.
    The video, showing Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, was later reposted by the Israeli army with some parts being blurred out, raising questions about the authenticity of the evidence being presented in the clip.
    RECOMMENDED READING: Israel fails to show evidence of Hamas command center at al-Shifa hospital

    Another raid at Al Shifa, including ‘strip searches’ of Palestinians: Israeli forces launched another raid at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the early hours of Thursday. The Israeli army has confirmed that it is conducting a military operation in the hospital.

    There are reports of some 200 people being blindfolded and interrogated and taken to unknown areas; their fate is unknown.

    An entire building at al-Shifa Hospital – the specialized surgeries building – has been completely damaged from the inside, in addition to Israeli forces blowing up a warehouse for medicine and medical equipment inside the hospital. Israeli bulldozers and vehicles also reportedly completely destroyed the southern entrance to al-Shifa Hospital and all vehicles in its courtyard.

    Medical sources told Wafa that the Israeli army installed facial recognition cameras and electronic gates in the hospital courtyard while strip-searching Palestinians in the medical complex. Israeli forces also reportedly arrested a number of displaced people and the families of those who were killed and wounded, who were seeking shelter there.

    The Red Cross and UNRWA are calling for the evacuation of the 650 patients at al-Shifa Hospital to other facilities. The patients would be put in tents or in a school near the European [Gaza] Hospital. The director-general of Gaza hospitals is demanding that patients be transferred to Egypt.

    Al Ahli Hospital targeted: Journalist Ismael al-Ghoul reported from near the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City that Israeli air strikes have targeted the perimeter of the hospital. The attacks could be seen as an indicator of preparations for raiding the medical facility. Ahli Arab Hospital is only providing basic medical services, as it was targeted earlier in the war. This video shows the intensity of the bombing.

    Out of 24 hospitals with in-patient capacity in the north, only one, Al Ahli in Gaza city, is presently operational and admitting patients. Eighteen hospitals have shut down and evacuated since the start of hostilities, including three – An Nasr, Ar Rantisi and Al Quds – over the past three days.

    RECOMMENDED READING: What we know about the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital blast

    Gaza City will soon be “uninhabitable”: Ha’aretz reports on what Israeli troops are doing besides ransacking Al Shifa hospitals:

    [D]ozens of battalion combat teams…are going from house to house [in Gaza City]…They’re taking no risks, and as nearly all of the million-plus population who lived in the area just six weeks ago have now fled south [NOTE: sources like Al Jazeera report that “hundreds of thousands” still remain in Gaza City]…this means that any building that is any way suspected of harboring weapons or tunnel entrances is bombed or bulldozed, or both.

    We may be very near the point where there are more Israeli soldiers in Gaza City than Gazans, and the issue of trying to avoid more civilian casualties will no longer exist because all those who can will have left.

    Wide swaths of the city and its surroundings have already been destroyed, and it’s only a matter of weeks before the largest Palestinian city is rendered totally uninhabitable.

    The article does not say what will happen to those Gazans who have been unable or unwilling to leave their homes.

    3 Palestinians killed in West Bank in alleged shooting attack: Three suspected Palestinian assailants allegedly opened fire at a checkpoint on a road between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Wednesday, wounding six security force members before the assailants were shot dead. The suspects arrived in a vehicle from the direction of Bethlehem, Shabtai told reporters at the scene, and opened fire when the Israeli forces there began questioning them. They were killed when the Israeli forces shot back, he said. One of the soldiers has died of his wounds.

    RECOMMENDED READING: Reports of harsh conditions and abuse in Israeli security prisons where Palestinians are being held for social media posts

    Palestinian lawmaker in Israel sanctioned: The Israeli Knesset’s Ethics Committee has temporarily sanctioned two Palestinian lawmakers, citing “inflammatory remarks” made after the 7 October Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel. MK Aida Touma-Suleiman of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality and MK Iman Khatib Yassin of the United Arab List were banned from taking part in Knesset hearings and votes for two months. They also face salary deductions.

    “Knesset Ethics Committee suspended me for 2 months for criticising the Israeli army’s action in Gaza,” Touma-Suleiman wrote on X. “Silencing of critical voices of Palestinian citizens and anti-war activists is rampant these days. The war must cease, persecution must end.”

    “Wake up. This is genocide”: Countries must “wake up” to the massive violations that Israel is committing in Gaza, a Palestinian ambassador told UN member states Thursday, insisting it was a “genocide.” “You should wake up in this room. This is a massacre, this is genocide, and we’re seeing it on TV. It cannot continue,” Palestinian ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi told a gathering of UN member states in Geneva.

    US doesn’t use its veto: The UN Security Council has passed a resolution calling for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip” to allow for aid delivery and medical evacuations, after four failed attempts to respond to the Israel-Hamas war. It was adopted by 12 votes in favor, zero against and three abstentions – Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom. It additionally asked for the unconditional release of captives held in Gaza.

    “It is binding international law, but we know that there are many Security Council resolutions that are binding international law that Israel does not comply with. But I think it will add added pressure on Israel, particularly as the US allowed this resolution to go through – it could’ve used its veto,” said Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays.

    Int’l civil society answers call to challenge Israel: An international delegation of writers, lawyers, journalists, and activists arrived in Cairo, Egypt this week to exert pressure to secure the safe passage of food, water, fuel, & medical aid to 2.3 million Palestinians facing starvation and death as genocidal Israeli airstrikes continuously pound defenseless civilians. They have submitted a request to Egypt for permission to travel to Rafah. Their effort is in response to the Palestinian and Arab calls for civil society to challenge Israel’s “deadly occupation.” They add,

    We urge all peoples and governments to act urgently to end this horror. There are hundreds of aid trucks currently parked in the desert waiting to enter the Rafah Crossing. We demand they be allowed to reach Palestinians whose needs are dire and desperate.

    The Washington Post reports: Israel has killed more than 11,100 Gazans. That’s one out of every 200 people, 0.5% of the population.

    US distances itself from Al Shifa raid: The United States has denied giving Israel a green light for a raid on al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip after backing Israeli claims that the medical facility was being used for military purposes. Speaking on Wednesday, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby countered accusations from Hamas that President Joe Biden’s administration was complicit in the raid.

    The US had previously stated that an intelligence assessment backed up Israel’s claims that al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza, sat atop a large Hamas command center.

    Americans’ support for Israel, war reaches a new low: A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday shows that 32 percent of respondents said “the US should support Israel” when asked what role Washington should take in the war. This is down from the 41 percent who shared this opinion in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in October. Meanwhile, 68 percent of respondents in the poll said they agreed with a statement that “Israel should call a ceasefire and try to negotiate.”

    RECOMMENDED READING: How Israel and the West smear the Palestinians as antisemitic

    Many groups urge Biden administration to change Israel policy: More than 500 political appointees and staff members representing some 40 government agencies sent a letter to President Biden on Tuesday protesting his support of Israel in its war in Gaza. A group of more than two dozen Democratic members of US Congress has signed a letter urging the Biden administration to agree to a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza.

    In the past 24 hours, two Israeli soldiers were reportedly killed in Gaza, bringing the total number of soldiers killed since the start of ground operations to 53, according to official Israeli sources.

    The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups towards Israeli population centres has continued over the past 24 hours, with no reported fatalities. (Information on rocket attacks is here.) It appears that the last time a rocket killed an Israeli was October 7, as reported by Ha’aretz. Ten Israelis were killed – 4 of them Palestinian Israelis.




    https://israelpalestinenews.org/november-16-todays-news-palestine-israel-day-41/
    November 16: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 41 Humanitarian & fuel updates, hospital crises, evacuation update, West Bank & Israel news, international community actions, and more Kathryn Shihadah November 16, 2023 November 16: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 41 Palestinians walk through the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City (photo) Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here. For more news, go here and here. Live broadcast news from the region is here. Some people are led to be skeptical of the Al Jazeera news network. However, the network has won several Emmys, a Peabody and the Overseas Press Association’s Edward R. Murrow award, among many other honors. The New York Times reports that “its reporting hews to international journalistic standards and provides a unique view on events in the Middle East.” it’s important to remember that all news sources may potentially have bias. For example, CNN uses anchors who used to work for the Israel Lobby, who have lifelong attachment to Israel, and who often exhibit pro-Israel spin and omission in their broadcasts. Similarly, Fox News is strongly influenced by Rupert Murdoch, who has a similarly strong attachment to Israel, and who may have fired Tucker Carlson, the network’s most popular host, in part due to the host’s opposition to war and his pattern of failing to exhibit sufficient devotion to Israel). Latest statistics: Palestinian death toll: 11,196* (10,999 in Gaza** (including at least 4,707 children and 3,155 women), and at least 197 in the West Bank). *IAK does not yet include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile is being disputed; although much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, experts are still looking into the incident. Israel is blocking an international investigation. Palestinian injuries: 30,076** (including at least 29,000 in Gaza** and 2,750 in the West Bank). **NOTE: it is impossible to offer an accurate number of injuries in Gaza due to the ongoing bombardment and communication disruption. The Associated Press has reported ~32,000 in Gaza, while the UN number is somewhat lower. Our total for Gaza and the West Bank is based on the conservative figure. It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties. About 1.6 million people have been displaced; 3,640 are missing (1,770 children) and presumed to be under rubble. Israel has now killed more Palestinians in a little over a month than in all the previous 22 years combined. Reported Israeli death toll has been reduced to ~1,200*** (The Israeli spokesman said the original figure of deaths on March 7 was an “initial estimate” – killed in West Bank, 53 in Gaza), including 32 Americans, and ~5,400 injured). The names of the 1,175 identified (about 33 of them children) are here. ***NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries in Israel may have been caused by Israeli soldiers; additionally, since Israel has a policy of universal conscription, it is unknown how many of those attending the outdoor rave a few miles from Gaza on stolen Palestinian land were Israeli soldiers. Hover over each bar for exact numbers. Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org Humanitarian aid: Since 21 October, 1,139 trucks carrying mainly medicines, food and water have entered Gaza via the Rafah crossing with Egypt, representing a fraction of the needs. Due to the absence of fuel, on 14 November, UNRWA’s solid waste removal services began shutting down, posing an environmental hazard, with about 400 tons of rubbish per day accumulating in overcrowded camps and IDP shelters. Fuel to Gaza: On 15 November, some 23,000 litres of fuel entered Gaza from Egypt, the first such delivery since 7 October. The Israeli authorities have restricted the use of this fuel only to use for UNRWA trucks distributing aid. The entry of fuel for all other purposes remains banned including for hospital generators and water and sanitation facilities. Given UNRWA requires about 160,000 litres of fuel per day to run basic humanitarian operations, it has had to halt key services. The small amount that entered Gaza was too late in the day to refuel the trucks for aid delivery. Deadly attacks over the past 24 hours included: on 14 November, in the afternoon, airstrikes reportedly hit Al Mohophin School, in Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, Gaza city, killing 17 people; the same day, at about 20:30, airstrikes reportedly hit a residential building in As Saftawi area, north of Gaza city, killing 13 people, including six women; on midday 14 November, airstrikes reportedly hit a building in Al Qarara, east of Khan Yunis, killing nine people; on 15 November, at around midday, airstrikes reportedly hit As Salhi Towers area, in Nuseirat, killing 14 people. Propaganda photo, then a bullet to the head: The Israeli army released a propaganda photo of one of its soldiers helping an elderly Palestinian man with a walking stick in an attempt to showcase its “safe corridor” for civilians fleeing northern Gaza. Shortly afterwards, 79-year-old Bashir Hajji was executed in cold blood by Israeli soldiers, according to Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Hajji’s granddaughter, Hala Hajji, told the Euro-Med Monitor team that he was executed after the photo was taken with one bullet to the head and back. “He died tired, cold, thirsty & hungry,” she wrote in a post on Instagram, confirming her grandfather’s death. OCHA reports arrests, beatings on evacuation route: Those fleeing to southern Gaza along the so-called safe “corridors” established by Israeli forces face arrest and the UN has received reports of beatings and people being stripped of their clothes by Israeli soldiers. (02:57 GMT) Palestinians fleeing south are “reporting the presence of dead bodies in the streets”. New evacuation orders in southern Gaza: The Israeli army dropped leaflets last night and in the early hours of this morning ordering residents on the eastern side of Khan Younis, close to the Israel border, to move to the western side because it is “safe.” Khan Younis is located in the southern half of the Gaza Strip. Tens of thousands of people displaced from the north have already sought refuge there in schools and tents, causing severe overcrowding amid shortages of food and water. RECOMMENDED READING: South Africa: World must urge Israel to stop ‘crime against humanity’ in Gaza Israeli troops brought boxes with them into Al Shifa Hospital, produced a weapons cache: When Israeli troops entered the hospital, they brought in boxes marked “baby food” and “medical supplies,” then later released a video it said showed some of the materials it allegedly recovered inside the hospital, including automatic weapons, grenades, ammunition and flak jackets. In one hospital department, “the soldiers [allegedly] located an operational command centre and technological assets belonging to Hamas, indicating that the terrorist organization uses the hospital for terrorist purposes,” an Israeli military statement said. According to a video released on X (see below), they found a laptop. There is no indication that Israeli troops’ boxes were inspected before they entered the hospital, or that any third party accompanied them on their inspection. Israeli army deletes, reposts video allegedly inside al-Shifa Hospital: According to the Israeli publication Haaretz, the Israeli military had taken down a social media post uploaded on X on Thursday, which showed what Israel claimed was proof of weapons being kept inside Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital. The Israeli military did not publish any explanation for the deletion of the post. The video, showing Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, was later reposted by the Israeli army with some parts being blurred out, raising questions about the authenticity of the evidence being presented in the clip. RECOMMENDED READING: Israel fails to show evidence of Hamas command center at al-Shifa hospital Another raid at Al Shifa, including ‘strip searches’ of Palestinians: Israeli forces launched another raid at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the early hours of Thursday. The Israeli army has confirmed that it is conducting a military operation in the hospital. There are reports of some 200 people being blindfolded and interrogated and taken to unknown areas; their fate is unknown. An entire building at al-Shifa Hospital – the specialized surgeries building – has been completely damaged from the inside, in addition to Israeli forces blowing up a warehouse for medicine and medical equipment inside the hospital. Israeli bulldozers and vehicles also reportedly completely destroyed the southern entrance to al-Shifa Hospital and all vehicles in its courtyard. Medical sources told Wafa that the Israeli army installed facial recognition cameras and electronic gates in the hospital courtyard while strip-searching Palestinians in the medical complex. Israeli forces also reportedly arrested a number of displaced people and the families of those who were killed and wounded, who were seeking shelter there. The Red Cross and UNRWA are calling for the evacuation of the 650 patients at al-Shifa Hospital to other facilities. The patients would be put in tents or in a school near the European [Gaza] Hospital. The director-general of Gaza hospitals is demanding that patients be transferred to Egypt. Al Ahli Hospital targeted: Journalist Ismael al-Ghoul reported from near the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City that Israeli air strikes have targeted the perimeter of the hospital. The attacks could be seen as an indicator of preparations for raiding the medical facility. Ahli Arab Hospital is only providing basic medical services, as it was targeted earlier in the war. This video shows the intensity of the bombing. Out of 24 hospitals with in-patient capacity in the north, only one, Al Ahli in Gaza city, is presently operational and admitting patients. Eighteen hospitals have shut down and evacuated since the start of hostilities, including three – An Nasr, Ar Rantisi and Al Quds – over the past three days. RECOMMENDED READING: What we know about the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital blast Gaza City will soon be “uninhabitable”: Ha’aretz reports on what Israeli troops are doing besides ransacking Al Shifa hospitals: [D]ozens of battalion combat teams…are going from house to house [in Gaza City]…They’re taking no risks, and as nearly all of the million-plus population who lived in the area just six weeks ago have now fled south [NOTE: sources like Al Jazeera report that “hundreds of thousands” still remain in Gaza City]…this means that any building that is any way suspected of harboring weapons or tunnel entrances is bombed or bulldozed, or both. We may be very near the point where there are more Israeli soldiers in Gaza City than Gazans, and the issue of trying to avoid more civilian casualties will no longer exist because all those who can will have left. Wide swaths of the city and its surroundings have already been destroyed, and it’s only a matter of weeks before the largest Palestinian city is rendered totally uninhabitable. The article does not say what will happen to those Gazans who have been unable or unwilling to leave their homes. 3 Palestinians killed in West Bank in alleged shooting attack: Three suspected Palestinian assailants allegedly opened fire at a checkpoint on a road between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Wednesday, wounding six security force members before the assailants were shot dead. The suspects arrived in a vehicle from the direction of Bethlehem, Shabtai told reporters at the scene, and opened fire when the Israeli forces there began questioning them. They were killed when the Israeli forces shot back, he said. One of the soldiers has died of his wounds. RECOMMENDED READING: Reports of harsh conditions and abuse in Israeli security prisons where Palestinians are being held for social media posts Palestinian lawmaker in Israel sanctioned: The Israeli Knesset’s Ethics Committee has temporarily sanctioned two Palestinian lawmakers, citing “inflammatory remarks” made after the 7 October Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel. MK Aida Touma-Suleiman of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality and MK Iman Khatib Yassin of the United Arab List were banned from taking part in Knesset hearings and votes for two months. They also face salary deductions. “Knesset Ethics Committee suspended me for 2 months for criticising the Israeli army’s action in Gaza,” Touma-Suleiman wrote on X. “Silencing of critical voices of Palestinian citizens and anti-war activists is rampant these days. The war must cease, persecution must end.” “Wake up. This is genocide”: Countries must “wake up” to the massive violations that Israel is committing in Gaza, a Palestinian ambassador told UN member states Thursday, insisting it was a “genocide.” “You should wake up in this room. This is a massacre, this is genocide, and we’re seeing it on TV. It cannot continue,” Palestinian ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi told a gathering of UN member states in Geneva. US doesn’t use its veto: The UN Security Council has passed a resolution calling for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip” to allow for aid delivery and medical evacuations, after four failed attempts to respond to the Israel-Hamas war. It was adopted by 12 votes in favor, zero against and three abstentions – Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom. It additionally asked for the unconditional release of captives held in Gaza. “It is binding international law, but we know that there are many Security Council resolutions that are binding international law that Israel does not comply with. But I think it will add added pressure on Israel, particularly as the US allowed this resolution to go through – it could’ve used its veto,” said Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays. Int’l civil society answers call to challenge Israel: An international delegation of writers, lawyers, journalists, and activists arrived in Cairo, Egypt this week to exert pressure to secure the safe passage of food, water, fuel, & medical aid to 2.3 million Palestinians facing starvation and death as genocidal Israeli airstrikes continuously pound defenseless civilians. They have submitted a request to Egypt for permission to travel to Rafah. Their effort is in response to the Palestinian and Arab calls for civil society to challenge Israel’s “deadly occupation.” They add, We urge all peoples and governments to act urgently to end this horror. There are hundreds of aid trucks currently parked in the desert waiting to enter the Rafah Crossing. We demand they be allowed to reach Palestinians whose needs are dire and desperate. The Washington Post reports: Israel has killed more than 11,100 Gazans. That’s one out of every 200 people, 0.5% of the population. US distances itself from Al Shifa raid: The United States has denied giving Israel a green light for a raid on al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip after backing Israeli claims that the medical facility was being used for military purposes. Speaking on Wednesday, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby countered accusations from Hamas that President Joe Biden’s administration was complicit in the raid. The US had previously stated that an intelligence assessment backed up Israel’s claims that al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza, sat atop a large Hamas command center. Americans’ support for Israel, war reaches a new low: A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday shows that 32 percent of respondents said “the US should support Israel” when asked what role Washington should take in the war. This is down from the 41 percent who shared this opinion in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in October. Meanwhile, 68 percent of respondents in the poll said they agreed with a statement that “Israel should call a ceasefire and try to negotiate.” RECOMMENDED READING: How Israel and the West smear the Palestinians as antisemitic Many groups urge Biden administration to change Israel policy: More than 500 political appointees and staff members representing some 40 government agencies sent a letter to President Biden on Tuesday protesting his support of Israel in its war in Gaza. A group of more than two dozen Democratic members of US Congress has signed a letter urging the Biden administration to agree to a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza. In the past 24 hours, two Israeli soldiers were reportedly killed in Gaza, bringing the total number of soldiers killed since the start of ground operations to 53, according to official Israeli sources. The firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups towards Israeli population centres has continued over the past 24 hours, with no reported fatalities. (Information on rocket attacks is here.) It appears that the last time a rocket killed an Israeli was October 7, as reported by Ha’aretz. Ten Israelis were killed – 4 of them Palestinian Israelis. https://israelpalestinenews.org/november-16-todays-news-palestine-israel-day-41/
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    November 16: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 41
    Humanitarian & fuel updates, hospital crises, evacuation update, West Bank & Israel news, international community actions, and more
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  • A Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran is Contemplated
    The U.S. led War on the People of Palestine and the Middle East is a Criminal Undertaking


    Introduction

    We stand in Solidarity with Palestine. But we must recognize that the United States Military and Intelligence apparatus is firmly behind Israel’s genocide directed against the People of Palestine.

    .

    And this must be part of the solidarity campaign, namely to Reveal the Truth regarding Washington’s insidious role, which is part of a carefully planned military agenda directed against Palestine and the broader Middle East. Netanyahu is a proxy, with a criminal record. He has the unbending support of Western Europe’s “Classe politique”.

    .

    The U.S. led War on the People of Palestine and the Middle East is a Criminal Undertaking

    Israel and the Zionist lobby in the U.S. are NOT exerting undue influence AGAINST U.S. Foreign Policy as outlined by numerous analysts.

    Quite the opposite. The Zionist lobby is firmly aligned with U.S. foreign policy, and Vice Versa. It targets those who are opposed to war, who call for a cease fire. It exerts influence in favour of the conduct of the U.S. military agenda in support of Israel.



    The US military-intelligence establishment in coordination with powerful financial interests is calling the shots in regards to Israel’s genocidal intent to “Wipe Palestine off the Map”.

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    America’s Military Doctrine: Deliberately Targeting and Killing Civilians

    The targeting of civilians and the killing of children in Gaza is modelled on numerous US sponsored massacres of civilians (1945-2023) including the 2004 attack on Fallujah. (More than 30 Million mainly civilian deaths in US-led wars in what is euphemistically called the “post War Era”).
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    Veteran War correspondent Felicity Arbuthnot reflected on the indescribable barbarity of the 2004 Fallujah massacre, which resulted in countless deaths and destruction. It was a genocide conducted by the U.S military:
    .

    “The Americans invaded, chillingly: “house to house, room to room”, raining death and destruction on the proud, ancient “City of Mosques.”

    Marines killed so many civilians that the municipal soccer stadium had to be turned into a graveyard …

    One correspondent wrote: “There has been nothing like the attack on Fallujah since the Nazi invasion and occupation of much of the European continent – the shelling and bombing of Warsaw in September 1939, the terror bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940.”



    Fallujah, 2004

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    The U.S. is supportive of the Israeli genocide directed against the people of Palestine. Prime Minister Netanyahu is a criminal. He is Washington’s proxy, unreservedly endorsed and supported by the Biden Administration as well as the U.S. Congress.

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    Zionism constitutes the ideological underpinnings of contemporary U.S. imperialism and its unending war against the people of the Middle East.

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    The Zionist “Greater Israel” dogma –as in all wars of religion since the dawn of mankind– is there to mislead people Worldwide as to “who is really pulling the strings”.

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    Zionism has become a useful instrument which is embodied in U.S. military doctrine. The “Promised Land” broadly coincides with America’s hegemonic agenda in the Middle East, namely what the U.S. military has designated as the “New Middle East”.

    .

    Cui Bono: “To Whom Does it Benefit”

    There are strategic, geopolitical and economic objectives behind Israel’s genocide directed against the people of Palestine. “Crimes are often committed to benefit their perpetrators”: Israel’s War against the People of Palestine serves the interests of Big Money, the Military Industrial Complex, Corrupt Politicians…

    The Genocide is implemented by Netanyahu on behalf of the United States.

    The US military and intelligence apparatus are behind Israel’s criminal bombing and invasion of Gaza. The unfolding Middle East War is largely directed against Iran.

    .

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    Iran and the Nuclear Issue

    Historical Antecedents. Using Israel As a Means to Attacking Iran

    In 2003, the war on Iran project (Operation Theatre Iran Near Term, TIRANNT)) was already Déjà Vu. It had been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 15 years.

    Let us recall that at the outset of Bush’s Second Term, Vice President Dick Cheney dropped a bombshell, hinting, in no uncertain terms, that Iran was “right at the top of the list” of the rogue enemies of America. And that Israel would, so to speak,

    “be doing the bombing for us” [paraphrase] , without US military involvement and without us putting pressure on them “to do it”. For further details see my article below was first published by Global Research in May 2005, as well as PBS Interview with Z. Brzezinski

    This Dick Cheney-style option is currently (November 2023) once more on the drawing board of the Pentagon, namely the possibility that Israel which is already bombing Lebanon and Syria, would be incited to wage an attack on Iran (acting on behalf of the United States).

    US Congress Resolution (H. RES. 559) Accuses Iran of Possessing Nuclear Weapons

    Careful timing: In June 2023, the US House of Representatives adopted Resolution (H. RES. 559) which provides a “Green Light” to wage war on Iran.

    The US House passed a resolution that allows the use of force against Iran, intimating without a shred of evidence that Iran has Nuclear Weapons:

    Resolved, That the House of Representatives declares it is the policy of the United States—

    (1) that a nuclear Islamic Republic of Iran is not acceptable;

    (2) that Iran must not be able to obtain a nuclear weapon under any circumstances or conditions;

    (3) to use all means necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon; and

    (4) to recognize and support the freedom of action of partners and allies, including Israel, to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

    Click below to access the complete text of H. RES 559



    Israel’s Undeclared Nuclear Weapons Arsenal

    Whereas Iran is tagged (without evidence) as a Nuclear Power by the U.S. House of Representatives, Washington fails to acknowledge that Israel is an undeclared nuclear power.

    In recent developments, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, “admitted to the world that Israel has nuclear weapons ready to be used against Palestinians”

    The Times of Israel reported that: “Amichai Eliyahu said Sunday [November 5, 2023] that one of Israel’s options in the war against Hamas was to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip”

    Video on Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Facility

    English subtitles



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    The War on Energy

    Unspoken Objective of a US-NATO-Israel War against Iran: Natural Gas

    Reserves of Natural Gas: Iran ranks Second after Russia. Russia, Iran and Qatar possess 54.1 percent of the World’s reserves of natural gas.

    -Russia 24.3%,

    -Iran 17.3%,

    -Qatar, 12.5 % (in partnership with Iran)

    versus

    -5.3 % for the US

    President Joe Biden ordered to “blow up” (September 2022) the Nordstream Pipeline, which constitutes a U.S. Act of War against the European Union.

    In the words of Joe Biden:

    “There will be no longer a Nord Stream 2”. Statement at White House Press Conference (February 7, 2022)

    America’s strategic objective was, despite its meagre reserves of natural gas:

    To Force the European Union to buy LNG “Made in America”.

    What this implies is that America’s military agenda against Russia and Iran constitutes a means to hike up EU energy prices, which is an act economic warfare against the People of Europe.






    The Iran-Qatar Natural Gas Partnership

    The maritime gas reserves of the Persian Gulf are under a (joint ownership) partnership between Qatar and Iran (See diagram below).





    The Biden Administration is Intent upon Destabilizing the Iran-Qatar Partnership

    This partnership is supportive of the People of Palestine.

    In March 2022, “President Joe Biden following a meeting with Qatar’s Emir Sheik Tamim “designated Qatar as a major non-NATO ally of the United States, fulfilling the promise that he had made to Qatar earlier this year [2022], the White House said” Reuters



    “The designation is granted by the United States to close, non-NATO allies that have strategic working relationships with the U.S. military.

    Biden promised Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, in January [2022] during a meeting at the White House that he would grant Qatar the special status.” Reuters See also followup Reuters article.

    What is at stake are cross-cutting coalitions. Qatar is a “Partner” of Iran in relation to the strategic reserves of maritime gas in the Persian Gulf. There is no formaI military cooperation between the two countries.

    Washington’s unspoken agenda is to break and/or destabilize Qatar’s Partnership with Iran, by integrating Qatar into the US-NATO military orbit.

    It is worth noting that a few days prior to the October 7, 2023 Hamas operation, the Emir of Qatar Sheik Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani “laid the foundation stone for the Northern Dome expansion project” in Iran’s Pars South Field (See map above).

    “the Emir of Qatar said the groundbreaking for the Northern Dome expansion project was laid today, which is in line with Qatar’s strategy to strengthen its position as a global LNG producer …

    This joint gas field, known as “South Pars” in Iran, is the largest natural gas field in the world and contains 50.97 trillion cubic meters of gas and about 7.9 billion cubic meters of natural gas condensate.

    At the time of writing, the implications of Qatar’s “Special Status” Military Alliance with the U.S. remain unclear.

    America’s Al-Udeid military base in Qatar (left) is the largest US base in the Middle East.

    Have the status and functions of Al Udeid changed since the signing of the March 2022 agreement designating Qatar as a “Major Non NATO Ally of the US”

    Qatar is both A Partner of Iran as well as a Major Non NATO Ally of the U.S. Reports confirm the development of a close relationship between the commanders of the US Air Force and the Qatari Emiri Air Force.

    Qatar is a “Powder Keg”?

    The U.S. foreign policy objective is to ultimately destroy and undermine that “friendship” with Iran which is highly valued and supported by Qatari citizens.

    The export of gas from South Pars North Dome transits through Iran, Turkey and Russia.

    Qatar, Russia and Iran (the 3 largest holders Worldwide of natural gas reserves) reached an agreement in 2009 to create a ‘Gas Troika’, a trilateral gas cooperation entity including the development of joint projects.

    A large number of countries including South Korea, India, Japan, China are importing LNG from Qatar.

    Last year (November 2022), “QatarEnergy signed a 27-year deal to supply China’s Sinopec with liquefied natural gas”. Qatar has also a strategic alliance with China.

    Washington’s objective under the disguise of America’s “Major Non-NATO Alliance” with Qatar is to:

    Break the Qatar-Iran Partnership
    Exclude Iran from the Joint Maritime Gas Field
    Exert US Control over the Maritime Gas Field in the Persian Gulf
    Weaken and Disable the “Gas Troika” (Russia, Iran, Qatar)
    Create Chaos in the Global Energy Market,
    Undermine the Trade in Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) to Numerous Countries
    .

    Iran. Third Largest Reserves of Oil Worldwide

    Iran is not only second in terms of its gas reserves after Russia, it ranks third Worldwide in relation to its oil reserves (12% of Worldwide oil reserves) versus a meagre 4% for the U.S.








    The Ben Gurion Canal Project

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    U.S. Seeks Dominance over Strategic International Waterways

    The Ben Gurion Canal Project was initially a “secret” (classified) U.S. project formulated in 1963 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory LLNG, a strategic think tank (focussing on nuclear radiation) on contract with the U.S Department of Energy. The LLNG project was formulated in response to the nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956 by President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1956-1970). Its intent was to bypass the Suez Canal.

    The Ben Gurion Canal project is currently contemplated as means control the channels of international maritime trade to the detriment of the people of the Middle East. It also seeks to destabilize China’s maritime commodity trade.



    In the context of the broader US-led Middle East War, the Ben Gurion Canal Project is part of America’s hegemonic military agenda. It is consistent with Netanyahu’s “Plan to Wipe Palestine Off the Map”.

    According to Yvonne Ridley:

    “The only thing stopping the newly-revised [Ben Gurion Canal] project from being revived and rubber-stamped is the presence of the Palestinians in Gaza. As far as Netanyahu is concerned they are standing in the way of the project” (Yvonne Ridley, November 10, 2023, emphasis added)

    The U.S led war is intent upon confiscating all Palestinian territories, which would be appropriated by the State of Israel, acting as a strategic “Anglo-American Hub” in the Middle East:

    The Ben Gurion Canal will give Israel in particular and other friendly nations the freedom from blackmail arising out of access to the Suez Canal.

    Arab states have been leveraging the Red Sea to pressure Israel and in response, Israel has decided to gain more control of the Red Sea. These African countries have cultural and economic affinities with the Arab states. One of the main military benefits for Israel is that it gives Israel the strategic options as the Ben Gurion Canal will totally take away the importance of Suez for the US military if needed in the aid for Israel.

    Israel aims to push Egypt further into a corner by eliminating Suez in the global trade and energy corridor and becoming a global trade and energy logistics center.

    Experts are of the opinion that this situation will shake the strategic-energy balance of China’s Belt and Road Project initiative in the Mediterranean, along with the Strait of Hormuz, which is the transfer point of 30 percent of the world’s energy. The Ben Gurion Canal would have the solid backing of the West. (Eurasia Review, November 7, 2023, emphasis added)

    .

    “Greater Israel”.

    Strategic “Anglo-American Hub”

    The Promised Land of Greater Israel coincides with America’s Colonial Design in the Middle East

    The Greater Israel design is not strictly a Zionist Project for the Middle East, it is an integral part of US foreign policy, its strategic objective is to extend US hegemony as well as fracture and balkanize the Middle East.

    In this regard, Washington’s strategy consists in destabilizing and weakening regional economic powers in the Middle East including Turkey and Iran. This policy –which is consistent with the Greater Israel– is accompanied by a process of political fragmentation.



    Since the Gulf war (1991), the Pentagon has contemplated the creation of a “Free Kurdistan” which would include the annexation of parts of Iraq, Syria and Iran as well as Turkey



    “The New Middle East”: Unofficial US Military Academy Map by Lt. Col. Ralph Peters

    .

    “America’s Promised Land”. Global Warfare

    When viewed in the current context, including the siege on Gaza, the Zionist Plan for the Middle East coincides with America’s long war against the Middle East. As we mentioned earlier the Zionist agenda provides an ideological and religious justification of America’s long war against the Middle East.

    The 1979-80. the so-called Soviet Afghan War, engineered by the CIA
    The 1980-88 Iraq-Iran War engineered by the U.S.
    The 1991 Gulf War against Iraq,
    The 2001 The US-NATO Invasion of Afghanistan,
    The 2003 Invasion of Iraq
    The 2006 War on Lebanon,
    The Arab Spring,
    The 2011 war on Libya,
    The 2015 war on Yemen
    Obama’s 2014-2017 “Counter-Terrorism” Operation against Iraq and Syria
    The ongoing wars against Syria, Iraq and Yemen
    The “Greater Israel” project consists in weakening and eventually fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of a US-Israeli expansionist project, with the support of NATO.

    Needless to day, the ideological and religious underpinnings of the “Greater Israel” project are consistent with America’s imperial design.

    While the Zionist agenda is not the driving force, it serves the useful purpose of misleading public opinion concerning America’s long war against the people of the Middle East.

    The Historical Context: A Sequence of Military Plans and Scenarios to Wage War on Iran

    Since the launching of the Theater Iran Near Term (TIRANNT) war games scenario in May 2003 (leaked classified doc), an escalation scenario involving military action directed against Iran and Syria had been envisaged, of which Syria was the first stage.

    TIRANNT was followed by a series of military plans pertaining to Iran. Numerous post 9/11 official statements and US military documents had pointed to an expanded Middle East war, involving the active participation of Israel.

    Israel is America’s ally. Military operations are closely coordinated. Israel does not act without Washington’s approval.

    U.S.-Israeli Air Defense

    Barely acknowledged by the media, the US and Israel have an integrated air defense system, which was set up in early 2009, shortly after the Israel invasion of Gaza under “Operation Cast Led”.

    The X-band radar air defense system set up by the US in Israel in 2009 would

    “integrate Israel’s missile defenses with the U.S. global missile detection network, which includes satellites, Aegis ships on the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and land-based Patriot radars and interceptors.” (Sen. Joseph Azzolina, Protecting Israel from Iran’s missiles, Bayshore News, December 26, 2008). )

    What this means is that Washington calls the shots. Confirmed by the Pentagon, the US military controls Israel’s Air Defense:

    ”This is and will remain a U.S. radar system,’ Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

    ‘So this is not something we are giving or selling to the Israelis and it is something that will likely require U.S. personnel on-site to operate.’” (Quoted in Israel National News, January 9, 2009, emphasis added).

    At the outset of Obama’s Second Term, the US and Israel initiated discussions pertaining to a “US personnel on site” presence in Israel, namely the establishment of a “permanent” and “official” military base inside Israel.

    And on September 17, 2017, a US Air Defense base located in the Negev desert was inaugurated.

    According to the Israeli IDF spokesperson, the objective is to send a “message to the region, ” including Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine.

    Of utmost relevance:

    Israel would not be able to act unilaterally against Iran, without a green light from the Pentagon which controls key components of Israel’s air defense system.

    In practice, a war on Iran, would be a joint US-NATO-Israeli endeavor, coordinated by US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with America’s allies playing a key (subordinate) role.

    Michel Chossudovsky, October 31, 2017, November 11, 2023

    Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran

    by

    Michel Chossudovsky

    May 2005

    At the outset of Bush’s second term, Vice President Dick Cheney dropped a bombshell. He hinted, in no uncertain terms, that Iran was “right at the top of the list” of the rogue enemies of America, and that Israel would, so to speak, “be doing the bombing for us”, without US military involvement and without us putting pressure on them “to do it”:

    “One of the concerns people have is that Israel might do it without being asked… Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards,” (quoted from an MSNBC Interview Jan 2005)

    Israel is a Rottweiler on a leash: The US wants to “set Israel loose” to attack Iran. Commenting the Vice President’s assertion, former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in an interview on PBS, confirmed with some apprehension, yes: Cheney wants Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to act on America’s behalf and “do it” for us:

    “Iran I think is more ambiguous. And there the issue is certainly not tyranny; it’s nuclear weapons. And the vice president today in a kind of a strange parallel statement to this declaration of freedom hinted that the Israelis may do it and in fact used language which sounds like a justification or even an encouragement for the Israelis to do it.”

    The foregoing statements are misleading. The US is not “encouraging Israel”. What we are dealing with is a joint US-Israeli military operation to bomb Iran, which has been in the active planning stage for more than a year. The Neocons in the Defense Department, under Douglas Feith, have been working assiduously with their Israeli military and intelligence counterparts, carefully identifying targets inside Iran (see Seymour Hersh)

    Under this working arrangement, Israel will not act unilaterally, without a green light from Washington. In other words, Israel will not implement an attack without the participation of the US.

    Covert Intelligence Operations: Stirring Ethnic Tensions in Iran

    Meanwhile, for the last two years, Washington has been involved in covert intelligence operations inside Iran. American and British intelligence and special forces (working with their Israeli counterparts) are involved in this operation.

    “A British intelligence official said that any campaign against Iran would not be a ground war like the one in Iraq. The Americans will use different tactics, said the intelligence officer. ‘It is getting quite scary.'” (Evening Standard, 17 June 2003)

    The expectation is that a US-Israeli bombing raid of Iran’s nuclear facilities will stir up ethnic tensions and trigger “regime change” in favor of the US. (See Arab Monitor).

    Bush advisers believe that the “Iranian opposition movement” will unseat the Mullahs. This assessment constitutes a gross misjudgment of social forces inside Iran. What is more likely to occur is that Iranians will consistently rally behind a wartime government against foreign aggression. In fact, the entire Middle East and beyond would rise up against US interventionism.

    Retaliation in the Case of a US-Israeli Aerial Attack

    Tehran has confirmed that it will retaliate if attacked, in the form of ballistic missile strikes directed against Israel (CNN, 8 Feb 2005). These attacks, could also target US military facilities in the Persian Gulf, which would immediately lead us into a scenario of military escalation and all out war.

    In other words, the air strikes against Iran could contribute to unleashing a war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region.

    Moreover, the planned attack on Iran should also be understood in relation to the timely withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, which has opened up a new space, for the deployment of Israeli forces. The participation of Turkey in the US-Israeli military operation is also a factor, following an agreement reached between Ankara and Tel Aviv.

    In other words, US and Israeli military planners must carefully weigh the far-reaching implications of their actions.

    Israel Builds up its Stockpile of Deadly Military Hardware

    A massive buildup in military hardware has occurred in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.

    Israel has recently taken delivery from the US of some 5,000 “smart air launched weapons” including some 500 BLU 109 ‘bunker-buster bombs. The (uranium coated) munitions are said to be more than “adequate to address the full range of Iranian targets, with the possible exception of the buried facility at Natanz, which may require the [more powerful] BLU-113 bunker buster“:

    “Given Israel’s already substantial holdings of such weapons, this increase in its inventory would allow a sustained assault with or without further US involvement.” (See Richard Bennett)

    Gbu 28 Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28)

    The Israeli Air Force would attack Iran’s nuclear facility at Bushehr using US as well Israeli produced bunker buster bombs. The attack would be carried out in three separate waves “with the radar and communications jamming protection being provided by U.S. Air Force AWACS and other U.S. aircraft in the area”. (See W Madsen)

    Bear in mind that the bunker buster bombs can also be used to deliver tactical nuclear bombs. The B61-11 is the “nuclear version” of the “conventional” BLU 113. It can be delivered in much same way as the conventional bunker buster bomb. (See Michel Chossudovsky, see also this)

    According to the Pentagon, tactical nuclear weapons are “safe for civilians”. Their use has been authorized by the US Senate. (See Michel Chossudovsky)

    Moreover, reported in late 2003, Israeli Dolphin-class submarines equipped with US Harpoon missiles armed with nuclear warheads are now aimed at Iran. (See Gordon Thomas)

    Even if tactical nuclear weapons are not used by Israel, an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities not only raises the specter of a broader war, but also of nuclear radiation over a wide area:

    “To attack Iran’s nuclear facilities will not only provoke war, but it could also unleash clouds of radiation far beyond the targets and the borders of Iran.” (Statement of Prof Elias Tuma, Arab Internet Network, Federal News Service, 1 March 2005)

    Moreover, while most reports have centered on the issue of punitive air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the strikes would most probably extend to other targets.

    While a ground war is contemplated as a possible “scenario” at the level of military planning, the US military would not be able to wage a an effective ground war, given the situation in Iraq. In the words of former National Security Adviser Lawrence Eagelberger:

    “We are not going to get in a ground war in Iran, I hope. If we get into that, we are in serious trouble. I don’t think anyone in Washington is seriously considering that.” ( quoted in the National Journal, 4 December 2004).

    Iran’s Military Capabilities

    Despite its overall weaknesses in relation to Israel and the US, Iran has an advanced air defense system, deployed to protect its nuclear sites; “they are dispersed and underground making potential air strikes difficult and without any guarantees of success.” (Jerusalem Post, 20 April 2005).

    It has upgraded its Shahab-3 missile, which can reach targets in Israel. Iran’s armed forces have recently conducted high-profile military exercises in anticipation of a US led attack. Iran also possesses some 12 X-55 strategic cruise missiles, produced by Ukraine. Iran’s air defense systems is said to feature Russian SA-2, SA-5, SA-6 as well as shoulder-launched SA-7 missiles (Jaffa Center for Strategic Studies).

    The US “Military Road Map”

    The Bush administration has officially identified Iran and Syria as the next stage of “the road map to war”.

    Targeting Iran is a bipartisan project, which broadly serves the interests of the Anglo-American oil conglomerates, the Wall Street financial establishment and the military-industrial complex.

    The broader Middle East-Central Asian region encompasses more than 70% of the World’s reserves of oil and natural gas. Iran possesses 10% of the world’s oil and ranks third after Saudi Arabia (25 %) and Iraq (11 %) in the size of its reserves. In comparison, the US possesses less than 2.8 % of global oil reserves. (See Eric Waddell, The Battle for Oil)

    The announcement to target Iran should come as no surprise. It is part of the battle for oil. Already during the Clinton administration, US Central Command (USCENTCOM) had formulated “in war theater plans” to invade both Iraq and Iran:

    “The broad national security interests and objectives expressed in the President’s National Security Strategy (NSS) and the Chairman’s National Military Strategy (NMS) form the foundation of the United States Central Command’s theater strategy. The NSS directs implementation of a strategy of dual containment of the rogue states of Iraq and Iran as long as those states pose a threat to U.S. interests, to other states in the region, and to their own citizens. Dual containment is designed to maintain the balance of power in the region without depending on either Iraq or Iran. USCENTCOM’s theater strategy is interest-based and threat-focused. The purpose of U.S. engagement, as espoused in the NSS, is to protect the United States’ vital interest in the region – uninterrupted, secure U.S./Allied access to Gulf oil. (USCENTCOM, USPolicy , emphasis added)

    Main Military Actors

    While the US, Israel, as well as Turkey (with borders with both Iran and Syria) are the main actors in this process, a number of other countries, in the region, allies of the US, including several Central Asian former Soviet republics have been enlisted. Britain is closely involved despite its official denials at the diplomatic level. Turkey occupies a central role in the Iran operation. It has an extensive military cooperation agreement with Israel. There are indications that NATO is also formally involved in the context of an Israel-NATO agreement reached in November 2004.

    Planning The Aerial Attack on Iran

    According to former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, George W. Bush has already signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran, scheduled for June.(See this)

    The June cut-off date should be understood. It does not signify that the attack will occur in June. What it suggests is that the US and Israel are “in a state of readiness” and are prepared to launch an attack by June or at a later date. In other words, the decision to launch the attack has not been made.

    Ritter’s observation concerning an impending military operation should nonetheless be taken seriously. In recent months, there is ample evidence that a major military operation is in preparation:

    1) several high profile military exercises have been conducted in recent months, involving military deployment and the testing of weapons systems.

    2) military planning meetings have been held between the various parties involved. There has been a shuttle of military and government officials between Washington, Tel Aviv and Ankara.

    3) A significant change in the military command structure in Israel has occurred, with the appointment of a new Chief of Staff.

    4) Intense diplomatic exchanges have been carried out at the international level with a view to securing areas of military cooperation and/or support for a US-Israeli led military operation directed against Iran.

    5) Ongoing intelligence operations inside Iran have been stepped up.

    6) Consensus Building: Media propaganda on the need to intervene in Iran has been stepped up, with daily reports on how Iran constitutes a threat to peace and global security.

    Timeline of Key Initiatives

    In the last few months, various key initiatives have been taken, which are broadly indicative that an aerial bombing of Iran is in the military pipeline:

    November 2004 in Brussels: NATO-Israel protocol: Israel’s IDF delegation to the NATO conference to met with military brass of six members of the Mediterranean basin nations, including Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania. NATO seeks to revive the framework, known as the Mediterranean Dialogue program, which would include Israel. The Israeli delegation accepted to participate in military exercises and “anti-terror maneuvers” together with several Arab countries.

    January 2005: the US, Israel and Turkey held military exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Syria. These exercises, which have been held in previous years were described as routine.

    February 2005. Following the decision reached in Brussels in November 2004, Israel was involved for the first time in military exercises with NATO, which also included several Arab countries.

    February 2005: Assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The assassination, which was blamed on Syria, serves Israeli and US interests and was used as a pretext to demand the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

    February 2005: Sharon fires his Chief-of-Staff, Moshe Ya’alon and appoints Air Force General Dan Halutz. This is the first time in Israeli history that an Air Force General is appointed Chief of Staff (See Uri Avnery)

    The appointment of Major General Dan Halutz as IDF Chief of Staff is considered in Israeli political circles as “the appointment of the right man at the right time.” The central issue is that a major aerial operation against Iran is in the planning stage, and Maj General Halutz is slated to coordinate the aerial bombing raids on Iran. Halutz’s appointment was specifically linked to Israel’s Iran agenda: “As chief of staff, he will in the best position to prepare the military for such a scenario.”

    March 2005: NATO’s Secretary General was in Jerusalem for follow-up talks with Ariel Sharon and Israel’s military brass, following the joint NATO-Israel military exercise in February. These military cooperation ties are viewed by the Israeli military as a means to “enhance Israel’s deterrence capability regarding potential enemies threatening it, mainly Iran and Syria.” The premise underlying NATO-Israel military cooperation is that Israel is under attack:

    “The more Israel’s image is strengthened as a country facing enemies who attempt to attack it for no justified reason, the greater will be the possibility that aid will be extended to Israel by NATO. Furthermore, Iran and Syria will have to take into account the possibility that the increasing cooperation between Israel and NATO will strengthen Israel’s links with Turkey, also a member of NATO. Given Turkey’s impressive military potential and its geographic proximity to both Iran and Syria, Israel’s operational options against them, if and when it sees the need, could gain considerable strength. ” (Jaffa Center for Strategic Studies, http://www.tau.ac.il/jcss/sa/v7n4p4Shalom.html )

    The Israel-NATO protocol is all the more important because it obligates NATO to align itself with the US-Israeli plan to bomb Iran, as an act of self defense on the part of Israel. It also means that NATO is also involved in the process of military consultations relating to the planned aerial bombing of Iran. It is of course related to the bilateral military cooperation agreement between Israel and Turkey and the likelihood that part of the military operation will be launched from Turkey, which is a member of NATO.

    Late March 2005: News leaks in Israel indicated an “initial authorization” by Prime Minster Ariel Sharon of an Israeli attack on Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant “if diplomacy failed to stop Iran’s nuclear program”. (The Hindu, 28 March 2005)

    March-April 2005: The Holding in Israel of Joint US-Israeli military exercises specifically pertaining to the launching of Patriot missiles.

    US Patriot missile crews stationed in Germany were sent to Israel to participate in the joint Juniper Cobra exercise with the Israeli military. The exercise was described as routine and “unconnected to events in the Middle East”: “As always, we are interested in implementing lessons learned from training exercises.” (UPI, 9 March 2005).

    April 2005: Donald Rumsfeld (right) was on an official visits to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan. His diplomatic endeavors were described by the Russian media as “literally circling Iran in an attempt to find the best bridgehead for a possible military operation against that country.”

    In Baku, Azerbaijan Rumsfeld was busy discussing the date for deployment of US troops in Azerbaijan on Iran’s North-Western border. US military bases described as “mobile groups” in Azerbaijan are slated to play a role in a military operation directed against Iran.

    Azerbaijan is a member of GUUAM, a military cooperation agreement with the US and NATO, which allows for the stationing of US troops in several of the member countries, including Georgia, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. The stated short term objective is to “neutralize Iran”. The longer term objective under the Pentagon’s “Caspian Plan” is to exert military and economic control over the entire Caspian sea basin, with a view to ensuring US authority over oil reserves and pipeline corridors.

    During his visit in April, Rumsfeld was pushing the US initiative of establishing “American special task forces and military bases to secure US influence in the Caspian region:

    “Called Caspian Watch, the project stipulates a network of special task forces and police units in the countries of the regions to be used in emergencies including threats to objects of the oil complex and pipelines. Project Caspian Watch will be financed by the United States ($100 million). It will become an advance guard of the US European Command whose zone of responsibility includes the Caspian region. Command center of the project with a powerful radar is to be located in Baku.” ( Defense and Security Russia, April 27, 2005)

    Rumsfeld’s visit followed shortly after that of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s to Baku.

    April 2005: Iran signs a military cooperation with Tajikistan, which occupies a strategic position bordering Afghanistan’s Northern frontier. Tajikistan is a member of “The Shanghai Five” military cooperation group, which also includes Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. Iran also has economic cooperation agreements with Turkmenistan.

    Mid April 2005: Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon meets George W Bush at his Texas Ranch. Iran is on the agenda of bilateral talks. More significantly, the visit of Ariel Sharon was used to carry out high level talks between US and Israeli military planners pertaining to Iran.

    Late April 2005. President Vladmir Putin is in Israel on an official visit. He announces Russia’s decision to sell short-range anti-aircraft missiles to Syria and to continue supporting Iran’s nuclear industry. Beneath the gilded surface of international diplomacy, Putin’s timely visit to Israel must be interpreted as “a signal to Israel” regarding its planned aerial attack on Iran.

    Late April 2005: US pressure in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been exerted with a view to blocking the re-appointment of Mohammed Al Baradei, who according to US officials “is not being tough enough on Iran…” Following US pressures, the vote on the appointment of a new IAEA chief was put off until June. These developments suggest that Washington wants to put forth their own hand-picked nominee prior to launching US-Israeli aerial attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. (See VOA). (In February 2003, Al Baradei along with UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix challenged the (phony) intelligence on WMD presented by the US to the UN Security Council, with a view to justifying the war on Iraq.)

    Late April 2005. Sale of deadly military hardware to Israel. GBU-28 Buster Bunker Bombs: Coinciding with Putin’s visit to Israel, the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency (Department of Defense) announced the sale of an additional 100 bunker-buster bombs produced by Lockheed Martin to Israel. This decision was viewed by the US media as “a warning to Iran about its nuclear ambitions.”

    The sale pertains to the larger and more sophisticated “Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28) BLU-113 Penetrator” (including the WGU-36A/B guidance control unit and support equipment). The GBU-28 is described as “a special weapon for penetrating hardened command centers located deep underground. The fact of the matter is that the GBU-28 is among the World’s most deadly “conventional” weapons used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, capable of causing thousands of civilian deaths through massive explosions.

    The Israeli Air Force are slated to use the GBU-28s on their F-15 aircraft. (See text of DSCA news release)

    Late April 2005- early May: Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (right) in Israel for follow-up talks with Ariel Sharon. He was accompanied by his Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul, who met with senior Israeli military officials. On the official agenda of these talks: joint defense projects, including the joint production of Arrow II Theater Missile Defense and Popeye II missiles. The latter also known as the Have Lite, are advanced small missiles, designed for deployment on fighter planes. Tel Aviv and Ankara decide to establish a hotline to share intelligence.

    May 2005: Syrian troops scheduled to withdraw from Lebanon, leading to a major shift in the Middle East security situation, in favor of Israel and the US.

    Iran Surrounded

    The US has troops and military bases in Turkey, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, and of course Iraq.

    In other words, Iran is virtually surrounded by US military bases. (see Map below). These countries as well as Turkmenistan, are members of NATO`s partnership for Peace Program and have military cooperation agreements with NATO.



    Copyright Eric Waddell, Global Research, 2003

    In other words, we are dealing with a potentially explosive scenario in which a number of countries, including several former Soviet republics, could be brought into a US led war with Iran. IranAtom.ru, a Russian based news and military analysis group has suggested, in this regard:

    “since Iranian nuclear objects are scattered all over the country, Israel will need a mass strike with different fly-in and fly-out approaches – Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and other countries… Azerbaijan seriously fears Tehran’s reaction should Baku issue a permit to Israeli aircraft to overfly its territory.” (Defense and Security Russia, 12 April 2005).

    Concluding remarks

    The World is at an important crossroads.

    The Bush Administration has embarked upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.

    Iran is the next military target. The planned military operation, which is by no means limited to punitive strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, is part of a project of World domination, a military roadmap, launched at the end of the Cold War.

    Military action against Iran would directly involve Israel’s participation, which in turn is likely to trigger a broader war throughout the Middle East, not to mention an implosion in the Palestinian occupied territories. Turkey is closely associated with the proposed aerial attacks.

    Israel is a nuclear power with a sophisticated nuclear arsenal. (See text box below). The use of nuclear weapons by Israel or the US cannot be excluded, particularly in view of the fact that tactical nuclear weapons have now been reclassified as a variant of the conventional bunker buster bombs and are authorized by the US Senate for use in conventional war theaters. (“they are harmless to civilians because the explosion is underground”)

    In this regard, Israel and the US rather than Iran constitute a nuclear threat.

    The planned attack on Iran must be understood in relation to the existing active war theaters in the Middle East, namely Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.

    The conflict could easily spread from the Middle East to the Caspian sea basin. It could also involve the participation of Azerbaijan and Georgia, where US troops are stationed.

    An attack on Iran would have a direct impact on the resistance movement inside Iraq. It would also put pressure on America’s overstretched military capabilities and resources in both the Iraqi and Afghan war theaters. (The 150,000 US troops in Iraq are already fully engaged and could not be redeployed in the case of a war with Iran.)

    In other words, the shaky geopolitics of the Central Asia- Middle East region, the three existing war theaters in which America is currently, involved, the direct participation of Israel and Turkey, the structure of US sponsored military alliances, etc. raises the specter of a broader conflict.

    Moreover, US military action on Iran not only threatens Russian and Chinese interests, which have geopolitical interests in the Caspian sea basin and which have bilateral agreements with Iran. It also backlashes on European oil interests in Iran and is likely to produce major divisions between Western allies, between the US and its European partners as well as within the European Union.

    Through its participation in NATO, Europe, despite its reluctance, would be brought into the Iran operation. The participation of NATO largely hinges on a military cooperation agreement reached between NATO and Israel. This agreement would bind NATO to defend Israel against Syria and Iran. NATO would therefore support a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and could take on a more active role if Iran were to retaliate following US-Israeli air strikes.

    Needless to say, the war against Iran is part of a longer term US military agenda which seeks to militarize the entire Caspian sea basin, eventually leading to the destabilization and conquest of the Russian Federation.

    The Antiwar Movement

    The antiwar movement must act, consistently, to prevent the next phase of this war from happening.

    This is no easy matter. The holding of large antiwar rallies will not in itself reverse the tide of war.

    High ranking officials of the Bush administration, members of the military and the US Congress have been granted the authority to uphold an illegal war agenda.

    What is required is a grass roots network, a mass movement at national and international levels, which challenges the legitimacy of the military and political actors, and which is ultimately instrumental in unseating those who rule in our name.

    War criminals occupy positions of authority. The citizenry is galvanized into supporting the rulers, who are “committed to their safety and well-being”. Through media disinformation, war is given a humanitarian mandate.

    To reverse the tide of war, military bases must be closed down, the war machine (namely the production of advanced weapons systems) must be stopped and the burgeoning police state must be dismantled.

    The corporate backers and sponsors of war and war crimes must also be targeted including the oil companies, the defense contractors, the financial institutions and the corporate media, which has become an integral part of the war propaganda machine.

    Antiwar sentiment does not dismantle a war agenda. The war criminals in the US, Israel and Britain must be removed from high office.

    What is needed is to reveal the true face of the American Empire and the underlying criminalization of US foreign policy, which uses the “war on terrorism” and the threat of Al Qaeda to galvanize public opinion in support of a global war agenda.

    Israel’s Nuclear Capabilities

    With between 200 and 500 thermonuclear weapons and a sophisticated delivery system, Israel has quietly supplanted Britain as the World’s 5th Largest nuclear power, and may currently rival France and China in the size and sophistication of its nuclear arsenal. Although dwarfed by the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia, each possessing over 10,000 nuclear weapons, Israel nonetheless is a major nuclear power, and should be publicly recognized as such.

    Today, estimates of the Israeli nuclear arsenal range from a minimum of 200 to a maximum of about 500. Whatever the number, there is little doubt that Israeli nukes are among the world’s most sophisticated, largely designed for “war fighting” in the Middle East. A staple of the Israeli nuclear arsenal are “neutron bombs,” miniaturized thermonuclear bombs designed to maximize deadly gamma radiation while minimizing blast effects and long term radiation- in essence designed to kill people while leaving property intact.(16) Weapons include ballistic missiles and bombers capable of reaching Moscow…

    The bombs themselves range in size from “city busters” larger than the Hiroshima Bomb to tactical mini nukes. The Israeli arsenal of weapons of mass destruction clearly dwarfs the actual or potential arsenals of all other Middle Eastern states combined, and is vastly greater than any conceivable need for “deterrence.”

    Many Middle East Peace activists have been reluctant to discuss, let alone challenge, the Israeli monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region, often leading to incomplete and uninformed analyses and flawed action strategies. Placing the issue of Israeli weapons of mass destruction directly and honestly on the table and action agenda would have several salutary effects. First, it would expose a primary destabilizing dynamic driving the Middle East arms race and compelling the region’s states to each seek their own “deterrent.”

    Second, it would expose the grotesque double standard which sees the U.S. and Europe on the one hand condemning Iraq, Iran and Syria for developing weapons of mass destruction, while simultaneously protecting and enabling the principal culprit. Third, exposing Israel’s nuclear strategy would focus international public attention, resulting in increased pressure to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction and negotiate a just peace in good faith. Finally, a nuclear free Israel would make a Nuclear Free Middle East and a comprehensive regional peace agreement much more likely. Unless and until the world community confronts Israel over its covert nuclear program it is unlikely that there will be any meaningful resolution of the Israeli/Arab conflict, a fact that Israel may be counting on as the Sharon era dawns.

    From John Steinbach, Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal, Global Research



    https://www.globalresearch.ca/planned-us-israeli-attack-on-iran-2/5615443
    A Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran is Contemplated The U.S. led War on the People of Palestine and the Middle East is a Criminal Undertaking Introduction We stand in Solidarity with Palestine. But we must recognize that the United States Military and Intelligence apparatus is firmly behind Israel’s genocide directed against the People of Palestine. . And this must be part of the solidarity campaign, namely to Reveal the Truth regarding Washington’s insidious role, which is part of a carefully planned military agenda directed against Palestine and the broader Middle East. Netanyahu is a proxy, with a criminal record. He has the unbending support of Western Europe’s “Classe politique”. . The U.S. led War on the People of Palestine and the Middle East is a Criminal Undertaking Israel and the Zionist lobby in the U.S. are NOT exerting undue influence AGAINST U.S. Foreign Policy as outlined by numerous analysts. Quite the opposite. The Zionist lobby is firmly aligned with U.S. foreign policy, and Vice Versa. It targets those who are opposed to war, who call for a cease fire. It exerts influence in favour of the conduct of the U.S. military agenda in support of Israel. The US military-intelligence establishment in coordination with powerful financial interests is calling the shots in regards to Israel’s genocidal intent to “Wipe Palestine off the Map”. . America’s Military Doctrine: Deliberately Targeting and Killing Civilians The targeting of civilians and the killing of children in Gaza is modelled on numerous US sponsored massacres of civilians (1945-2023) including the 2004 attack on Fallujah. (More than 30 Million mainly civilian deaths in US-led wars in what is euphemistically called the “post War Era”). . Veteran War correspondent Felicity Arbuthnot reflected on the indescribable barbarity of the 2004 Fallujah massacre, which resulted in countless deaths and destruction. It was a genocide conducted by the U.S military: . “The Americans invaded, chillingly: “house to house, room to room”, raining death and destruction on the proud, ancient “City of Mosques.” Marines killed so many civilians that the municipal soccer stadium had to be turned into a graveyard … One correspondent wrote: “There has been nothing like the attack on Fallujah since the Nazi invasion and occupation of much of the European continent – the shelling and bombing of Warsaw in September 1939, the terror bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940.” Fallujah, 2004 . The U.S. is supportive of the Israeli genocide directed against the people of Palestine. Prime Minister Netanyahu is a criminal. He is Washington’s proxy, unreservedly endorsed and supported by the Biden Administration as well as the U.S. Congress. . Zionism constitutes the ideological underpinnings of contemporary U.S. imperialism and its unending war against the people of the Middle East. . The Zionist “Greater Israel” dogma –as in all wars of religion since the dawn of mankind– is there to mislead people Worldwide as to “who is really pulling the strings”. . Zionism has become a useful instrument which is embodied in U.S. military doctrine. The “Promised Land” broadly coincides with America’s hegemonic agenda in the Middle East, namely what the U.S. military has designated as the “New Middle East”. . Cui Bono: “To Whom Does it Benefit” There are strategic, geopolitical and economic objectives behind Israel’s genocide directed against the people of Palestine. “Crimes are often committed to benefit their perpetrators”: Israel’s War against the People of Palestine serves the interests of Big Money, the Military Industrial Complex, Corrupt Politicians… The Genocide is implemented by Netanyahu on behalf of the United States. The US military and intelligence apparatus are behind Israel’s criminal bombing and invasion of Gaza. The unfolding Middle East War is largely directed against Iran. . . Iran and the Nuclear Issue Historical Antecedents. Using Israel As a Means to Attacking Iran In 2003, the war on Iran project (Operation Theatre Iran Near Term, TIRANNT)) was already Déjà Vu. It had been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than 15 years. Let us recall that at the outset of Bush’s Second Term, Vice President Dick Cheney dropped a bombshell, hinting, in no uncertain terms, that Iran was “right at the top of the list” of the rogue enemies of America. And that Israel would, so to speak, “be doing the bombing for us” [paraphrase] , without US military involvement and without us putting pressure on them “to do it”. For further details see my article below was first published by Global Research in May 2005, as well as PBS Interview with Z. Brzezinski This Dick Cheney-style option is currently (November 2023) once more on the drawing board of the Pentagon, namely the possibility that Israel which is already bombing Lebanon and Syria, would be incited to wage an attack on Iran (acting on behalf of the United States). US Congress Resolution (H. RES. 559) Accuses Iran of Possessing Nuclear Weapons Careful timing: In June 2023, the US House of Representatives adopted Resolution (H. RES. 559) which provides a “Green Light” to wage war on Iran. The US House passed a resolution that allows the use of force against Iran, intimating without a shred of evidence that Iran has Nuclear Weapons: Resolved, That the House of Representatives declares it is the policy of the United States— (1) that a nuclear Islamic Republic of Iran is not acceptable; (2) that Iran must not be able to obtain a nuclear weapon under any circumstances or conditions; (3) to use all means necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon; and (4) to recognize and support the freedom of action of partners and allies, including Israel, to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Click below to access the complete text of H. RES 559 Israel’s Undeclared Nuclear Weapons Arsenal Whereas Iran is tagged (without evidence) as a Nuclear Power by the U.S. House of Representatives, Washington fails to acknowledge that Israel is an undeclared nuclear power. In recent developments, Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, “admitted to the world that Israel has nuclear weapons ready to be used against Palestinians” The Times of Israel reported that: “Amichai Eliyahu said Sunday [November 5, 2023] that one of Israel’s options in the war against Hamas was to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip” Video on Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Facility English subtitles . . The War on Energy Unspoken Objective of a US-NATO-Israel War against Iran: Natural Gas Reserves of Natural Gas: Iran ranks Second after Russia. Russia, Iran and Qatar possess 54.1 percent of the World’s reserves of natural gas. -Russia 24.3%, -Iran 17.3%, -Qatar, 12.5 % (in partnership with Iran) versus -5.3 % for the US President Joe Biden ordered to “blow up” (September 2022) the Nordstream Pipeline, which constitutes a U.S. Act of War against the European Union. In the words of Joe Biden: “There will be no longer a Nord Stream 2”. Statement at White House Press Conference (February 7, 2022) America’s strategic objective was, despite its meagre reserves of natural gas: To Force the European Union to buy LNG “Made in America”. What this implies is that America’s military agenda against Russia and Iran constitutes a means to hike up EU energy prices, which is an act economic warfare against the People of Europe. The Iran-Qatar Natural Gas Partnership The maritime gas reserves of the Persian Gulf are under a (joint ownership) partnership between Qatar and Iran (See diagram below). The Biden Administration is Intent upon Destabilizing the Iran-Qatar Partnership This partnership is supportive of the People of Palestine. In March 2022, “President Joe Biden following a meeting with Qatar’s Emir Sheik Tamim “designated Qatar as a major non-NATO ally of the United States, fulfilling the promise that he had made to Qatar earlier this year [2022], the White House said” Reuters “The designation is granted by the United States to close, non-NATO allies that have strategic working relationships with the U.S. military. Biden promised Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, in January [2022] during a meeting at the White House that he would grant Qatar the special status.” Reuters See also followup Reuters article. What is at stake are cross-cutting coalitions. Qatar is a “Partner” of Iran in relation to the strategic reserves of maritime gas in the Persian Gulf. There is no formaI military cooperation between the two countries. Washington’s unspoken agenda is to break and/or destabilize Qatar’s Partnership with Iran, by integrating Qatar into the US-NATO military orbit. It is worth noting that a few days prior to the October 7, 2023 Hamas operation, the Emir of Qatar Sheik Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani “laid the foundation stone for the Northern Dome expansion project” in Iran’s Pars South Field (See map above). “the Emir of Qatar said the groundbreaking for the Northern Dome expansion project was laid today, which is in line with Qatar’s strategy to strengthen its position as a global LNG producer … This joint gas field, known as “South Pars” in Iran, is the largest natural gas field in the world and contains 50.97 trillion cubic meters of gas and about 7.9 billion cubic meters of natural gas condensate. At the time of writing, the implications of Qatar’s “Special Status” Military Alliance with the U.S. remain unclear. America’s Al-Udeid military base in Qatar (left) is the largest US base in the Middle East. Have the status and functions of Al Udeid changed since the signing of the March 2022 agreement designating Qatar as a “Major Non NATO Ally of the US” Qatar is both A Partner of Iran as well as a Major Non NATO Ally of the U.S. Reports confirm the development of a close relationship between the commanders of the US Air Force and the Qatari Emiri Air Force. Qatar is a “Powder Keg”? The U.S. foreign policy objective is to ultimately destroy and undermine that “friendship” with Iran which is highly valued and supported by Qatari citizens. The export of gas from South Pars North Dome transits through Iran, Turkey and Russia. Qatar, Russia and Iran (the 3 largest holders Worldwide of natural gas reserves) reached an agreement in 2009 to create a ‘Gas Troika’, a trilateral gas cooperation entity including the development of joint projects. A large number of countries including South Korea, India, Japan, China are importing LNG from Qatar. Last year (November 2022), “QatarEnergy signed a 27-year deal to supply China’s Sinopec with liquefied natural gas”. Qatar has also a strategic alliance with China. Washington’s objective under the disguise of America’s “Major Non-NATO Alliance” with Qatar is to: Break the Qatar-Iran Partnership Exclude Iran from the Joint Maritime Gas Field Exert US Control over the Maritime Gas Field in the Persian Gulf Weaken and Disable the “Gas Troika” (Russia, Iran, Qatar) Create Chaos in the Global Energy Market, Undermine the Trade in Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) to Numerous Countries . Iran. Third Largest Reserves of Oil Worldwide Iran is not only second in terms of its gas reserves after Russia, it ranks third Worldwide in relation to its oil reserves (12% of Worldwide oil reserves) versus a meagre 4% for the U.S. The Ben Gurion Canal Project . U.S. Seeks Dominance over Strategic International Waterways The Ben Gurion Canal Project was initially a “secret” (classified) U.S. project formulated in 1963 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory LLNG, a strategic think tank (focussing on nuclear radiation) on contract with the U.S Department of Energy. The LLNG project was formulated in response to the nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956 by President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1956-1970). Its intent was to bypass the Suez Canal. The Ben Gurion Canal project is currently contemplated as means control the channels of international maritime trade to the detriment of the people of the Middle East. It also seeks to destabilize China’s maritime commodity trade. In the context of the broader US-led Middle East War, the Ben Gurion Canal Project is part of America’s hegemonic military agenda. It is consistent with Netanyahu’s “Plan to Wipe Palestine Off the Map”. According to Yvonne Ridley: “The only thing stopping the newly-revised [Ben Gurion Canal] project from being revived and rubber-stamped is the presence of the Palestinians in Gaza. As far as Netanyahu is concerned they are standing in the way of the project” (Yvonne Ridley, November 10, 2023, emphasis added) The U.S led war is intent upon confiscating all Palestinian territories, which would be appropriated by the State of Israel, acting as a strategic “Anglo-American Hub” in the Middle East: The Ben Gurion Canal will give Israel in particular and other friendly nations the freedom from blackmail arising out of access to the Suez Canal. Arab states have been leveraging the Red Sea to pressure Israel and in response, Israel has decided to gain more control of the Red Sea. These African countries have cultural and economic affinities with the Arab states. One of the main military benefits for Israel is that it gives Israel the strategic options as the Ben Gurion Canal will totally take away the importance of Suez for the US military if needed in the aid for Israel. Israel aims to push Egypt further into a corner by eliminating Suez in the global trade and energy corridor and becoming a global trade and energy logistics center. Experts are of the opinion that this situation will shake the strategic-energy balance of China’s Belt and Road Project initiative in the Mediterranean, along with the Strait of Hormuz, which is the transfer point of 30 percent of the world’s energy. The Ben Gurion Canal would have the solid backing of the West. (Eurasia Review, November 7, 2023, emphasis added) . “Greater Israel”. Strategic “Anglo-American Hub” The Promised Land of Greater Israel coincides with America’s Colonial Design in the Middle East The Greater Israel design is not strictly a Zionist Project for the Middle East, it is an integral part of US foreign policy, its strategic objective is to extend US hegemony as well as fracture and balkanize the Middle East. In this regard, Washington’s strategy consists in destabilizing and weakening regional economic powers in the Middle East including Turkey and Iran. This policy –which is consistent with the Greater Israel– is accompanied by a process of political fragmentation. Since the Gulf war (1991), the Pentagon has contemplated the creation of a “Free Kurdistan” which would include the annexation of parts of Iraq, Syria and Iran as well as Turkey “The New Middle East”: Unofficial US Military Academy Map by Lt. Col. Ralph Peters . “America’s Promised Land”. Global Warfare When viewed in the current context, including the siege on Gaza, the Zionist Plan for the Middle East coincides with America’s long war against the Middle East. As we mentioned earlier the Zionist agenda provides an ideological and religious justification of America’s long war against the Middle East. The 1979-80. the so-called Soviet Afghan War, engineered by the CIA The 1980-88 Iraq-Iran War engineered by the U.S. The 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, The 2001 The US-NATO Invasion of Afghanistan, The 2003 Invasion of Iraq The 2006 War on Lebanon, The Arab Spring, The 2011 war on Libya, The 2015 war on Yemen Obama’s 2014-2017 “Counter-Terrorism” Operation against Iraq and Syria The ongoing wars against Syria, Iraq and Yemen The “Greater Israel” project consists in weakening and eventually fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of a US-Israeli expansionist project, with the support of NATO. Needless to day, the ideological and religious underpinnings of the “Greater Israel” project are consistent with America’s imperial design. While the Zionist agenda is not the driving force, it serves the useful purpose of misleading public opinion concerning America’s long war against the people of the Middle East. The Historical Context: A Sequence of Military Plans and Scenarios to Wage War on Iran Since the launching of the Theater Iran Near Term (TIRANNT) war games scenario in May 2003 (leaked classified doc), an escalation scenario involving military action directed against Iran and Syria had been envisaged, of which Syria was the first stage. TIRANNT was followed by a series of military plans pertaining to Iran. Numerous post 9/11 official statements and US military documents had pointed to an expanded Middle East war, involving the active participation of Israel. Israel is America’s ally. Military operations are closely coordinated. Israel does not act without Washington’s approval. U.S.-Israeli Air Defense Barely acknowledged by the media, the US and Israel have an integrated air defense system, which was set up in early 2009, shortly after the Israel invasion of Gaza under “Operation Cast Led”. The X-band radar air defense system set up by the US in Israel in 2009 would “integrate Israel’s missile defenses with the U.S. global missile detection network, which includes satellites, Aegis ships on the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and land-based Patriot radars and interceptors.” (Sen. Joseph Azzolina, Protecting Israel from Iran’s missiles, Bayshore News, December 26, 2008). ) What this means is that Washington calls the shots. Confirmed by the Pentagon, the US military controls Israel’s Air Defense: ”This is and will remain a U.S. radar system,’ Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. ‘So this is not something we are giving or selling to the Israelis and it is something that will likely require U.S. personnel on-site to operate.’” (Quoted in Israel National News, January 9, 2009, emphasis added). At the outset of Obama’s Second Term, the US and Israel initiated discussions pertaining to a “US personnel on site” presence in Israel, namely the establishment of a “permanent” and “official” military base inside Israel. And on September 17, 2017, a US Air Defense base located in the Negev desert was inaugurated. According to the Israeli IDF spokesperson, the objective is to send a “message to the region, ” including Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. Of utmost relevance: Israel would not be able to act unilaterally against Iran, without a green light from the Pentagon which controls key components of Israel’s air defense system. In practice, a war on Iran, would be a joint US-NATO-Israeli endeavor, coordinated by US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with America’s allies playing a key (subordinate) role. Michel Chossudovsky, October 31, 2017, November 11, 2023 Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran by Michel Chossudovsky May 2005 At the outset of Bush’s second term, Vice President Dick Cheney dropped a bombshell. He hinted, in no uncertain terms, that Iran was “right at the top of the list” of the rogue enemies of America, and that Israel would, so to speak, “be doing the bombing for us”, without US military involvement and without us putting pressure on them “to do it”: “One of the concerns people have is that Israel might do it without being asked… Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards,” (quoted from an MSNBC Interview Jan 2005) Israel is a Rottweiler on a leash: The US wants to “set Israel loose” to attack Iran. Commenting the Vice President’s assertion, former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in an interview on PBS, confirmed with some apprehension, yes: Cheney wants Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to act on America’s behalf and “do it” for us: “Iran I think is more ambiguous. And there the issue is certainly not tyranny; it’s nuclear weapons. And the vice president today in a kind of a strange parallel statement to this declaration of freedom hinted that the Israelis may do it and in fact used language which sounds like a justification or even an encouragement for the Israelis to do it.” The foregoing statements are misleading. The US is not “encouraging Israel”. What we are dealing with is a joint US-Israeli military operation to bomb Iran, which has been in the active planning stage for more than a year. The Neocons in the Defense Department, under Douglas Feith, have been working assiduously with their Israeli military and intelligence counterparts, carefully identifying targets inside Iran (see Seymour Hersh) Under this working arrangement, Israel will not act unilaterally, without a green light from Washington. In other words, Israel will not implement an attack without the participation of the US. Covert Intelligence Operations: Stirring Ethnic Tensions in Iran Meanwhile, for the last two years, Washington has been involved in covert intelligence operations inside Iran. American and British intelligence and special forces (working with their Israeli counterparts) are involved in this operation. “A British intelligence official said that any campaign against Iran would not be a ground war like the one in Iraq. The Americans will use different tactics, said the intelligence officer. ‘It is getting quite scary.'” (Evening Standard, 17 June 2003) The expectation is that a US-Israeli bombing raid of Iran’s nuclear facilities will stir up ethnic tensions and trigger “regime change” in favor of the US. (See Arab Monitor). Bush advisers believe that the “Iranian opposition movement” will unseat the Mullahs. This assessment constitutes a gross misjudgment of social forces inside Iran. What is more likely to occur is that Iranians will consistently rally behind a wartime government against foreign aggression. In fact, the entire Middle East and beyond would rise up against US interventionism. Retaliation in the Case of a US-Israeli Aerial Attack Tehran has confirmed that it will retaliate if attacked, in the form of ballistic missile strikes directed against Israel (CNN, 8 Feb 2005). These attacks, could also target US military facilities in the Persian Gulf, which would immediately lead us into a scenario of military escalation and all out war. In other words, the air strikes against Iran could contribute to unleashing a war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region. Moreover, the planned attack on Iran should also be understood in relation to the timely withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, which has opened up a new space, for the deployment of Israeli forces. The participation of Turkey in the US-Israeli military operation is also a factor, following an agreement reached between Ankara and Tel Aviv. In other words, US and Israeli military planners must carefully weigh the far-reaching implications of their actions. Israel Builds up its Stockpile of Deadly Military Hardware A massive buildup in military hardware has occurred in preparation for a possible attack on Iran. Israel has recently taken delivery from the US of some 5,000 “smart air launched weapons” including some 500 BLU 109 ‘bunker-buster bombs. The (uranium coated) munitions are said to be more than “adequate to address the full range of Iranian targets, with the possible exception of the buried facility at Natanz, which may require the [more powerful] BLU-113 bunker buster“: “Given Israel’s already substantial holdings of such weapons, this increase in its inventory would allow a sustained assault with or without further US involvement.” (See Richard Bennett) Gbu 28 Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28) The Israeli Air Force would attack Iran’s nuclear facility at Bushehr using US as well Israeli produced bunker buster bombs. The attack would be carried out in three separate waves “with the radar and communications jamming protection being provided by U.S. Air Force AWACS and other U.S. aircraft in the area”. (See W Madsen) Bear in mind that the bunker buster bombs can also be used to deliver tactical nuclear bombs. The B61-11 is the “nuclear version” of the “conventional” BLU 113. It can be delivered in much same way as the conventional bunker buster bomb. (See Michel Chossudovsky, see also this) According to the Pentagon, tactical nuclear weapons are “safe for civilians”. Their use has been authorized by the US Senate. (See Michel Chossudovsky) Moreover, reported in late 2003, Israeli Dolphin-class submarines equipped with US Harpoon missiles armed with nuclear warheads are now aimed at Iran. (See Gordon Thomas) Even if tactical nuclear weapons are not used by Israel, an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities not only raises the specter of a broader war, but also of nuclear radiation over a wide area: “To attack Iran’s nuclear facilities will not only provoke war, but it could also unleash clouds of radiation far beyond the targets and the borders of Iran.” (Statement of Prof Elias Tuma, Arab Internet Network, Federal News Service, 1 March 2005) Moreover, while most reports have centered on the issue of punitive air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the strikes would most probably extend to other targets. While a ground war is contemplated as a possible “scenario” at the level of military planning, the US military would not be able to wage a an effective ground war, given the situation in Iraq. In the words of former National Security Adviser Lawrence Eagelberger: “We are not going to get in a ground war in Iran, I hope. If we get into that, we are in serious trouble. I don’t think anyone in Washington is seriously considering that.” ( quoted in the National Journal, 4 December 2004). Iran’s Military Capabilities Despite its overall weaknesses in relation to Israel and the US, Iran has an advanced air defense system, deployed to protect its nuclear sites; “they are dispersed and underground making potential air strikes difficult and without any guarantees of success.” (Jerusalem Post, 20 April 2005). It has upgraded its Shahab-3 missile, which can reach targets in Israel. Iran’s armed forces have recently conducted high-profile military exercises in anticipation of a US led attack. Iran also possesses some 12 X-55 strategic cruise missiles, produced by Ukraine. Iran’s air defense systems is said to feature Russian SA-2, SA-5, SA-6 as well as shoulder-launched SA-7 missiles (Jaffa Center for Strategic Studies). The US “Military Road Map” The Bush administration has officially identified Iran and Syria as the next stage of “the road map to war”. Targeting Iran is a bipartisan project, which broadly serves the interests of the Anglo-American oil conglomerates, the Wall Street financial establishment and the military-industrial complex. The broader Middle East-Central Asian region encompasses more than 70% of the World’s reserves of oil and natural gas. Iran possesses 10% of the world’s oil and ranks third after Saudi Arabia (25 %) and Iraq (11 %) in the size of its reserves. In comparison, the US possesses less than 2.8 % of global oil reserves. (See Eric Waddell, The Battle for Oil) The announcement to target Iran should come as no surprise. It is part of the battle for oil. Already during the Clinton administration, US Central Command (USCENTCOM) had formulated “in war theater plans” to invade both Iraq and Iran: “The broad national security interests and objectives expressed in the President’s National Security Strategy (NSS) and the Chairman’s National Military Strategy (NMS) form the foundation of the United States Central Command’s theater strategy. The NSS directs implementation of a strategy of dual containment of the rogue states of Iraq and Iran as long as those states pose a threat to U.S. interests, to other states in the region, and to their own citizens. Dual containment is designed to maintain the balance of power in the region without depending on either Iraq or Iran. USCENTCOM’s theater strategy is interest-based and threat-focused. The purpose of U.S. engagement, as espoused in the NSS, is to protect the United States’ vital interest in the region – uninterrupted, secure U.S./Allied access to Gulf oil. (USCENTCOM, USPolicy , emphasis added) Main Military Actors While the US, Israel, as well as Turkey (with borders with both Iran and Syria) are the main actors in this process, a number of other countries, in the region, allies of the US, including several Central Asian former Soviet republics have been enlisted. Britain is closely involved despite its official denials at the diplomatic level. Turkey occupies a central role in the Iran operation. It has an extensive military cooperation agreement with Israel. There are indications that NATO is also formally involved in the context of an Israel-NATO agreement reached in November 2004. Planning The Aerial Attack on Iran According to former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, George W. Bush has already signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran, scheduled for June.(See this) The June cut-off date should be understood. It does not signify that the attack will occur in June. What it suggests is that the US and Israel are “in a state of readiness” and are prepared to launch an attack by June or at a later date. In other words, the decision to launch the attack has not been made. Ritter’s observation concerning an impending military operation should nonetheless be taken seriously. In recent months, there is ample evidence that a major military operation is in preparation: 1) several high profile military exercises have been conducted in recent months, involving military deployment and the testing of weapons systems. 2) military planning meetings have been held between the various parties involved. There has been a shuttle of military and government officials between Washington, Tel Aviv and Ankara. 3) A significant change in the military command structure in Israel has occurred, with the appointment of a new Chief of Staff. 4) Intense diplomatic exchanges have been carried out at the international level with a view to securing areas of military cooperation and/or support for a US-Israeli led military operation directed against Iran. 5) Ongoing intelligence operations inside Iran have been stepped up. 6) Consensus Building: Media propaganda on the need to intervene in Iran has been stepped up, with daily reports on how Iran constitutes a threat to peace and global security. Timeline of Key Initiatives In the last few months, various key initiatives have been taken, which are broadly indicative that an aerial bombing of Iran is in the military pipeline: November 2004 in Brussels: NATO-Israel protocol: Israel’s IDF delegation to the NATO conference to met with military brass of six members of the Mediterranean basin nations, including Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania. NATO seeks to revive the framework, known as the Mediterranean Dialogue program, which would include Israel. The Israeli delegation accepted to participate in military exercises and “anti-terror maneuvers” together with several Arab countries. January 2005: the US, Israel and Turkey held military exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Syria. These exercises, which have been held in previous years were described as routine. February 2005. Following the decision reached in Brussels in November 2004, Israel was involved for the first time in military exercises with NATO, which also included several Arab countries. February 2005: Assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The assassination, which was blamed on Syria, serves Israeli and US interests and was used as a pretext to demand the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. February 2005: Sharon fires his Chief-of-Staff, Moshe Ya’alon and appoints Air Force General Dan Halutz. This is the first time in Israeli history that an Air Force General is appointed Chief of Staff (See Uri Avnery) The appointment of Major General Dan Halutz as IDF Chief of Staff is considered in Israeli political circles as “the appointment of the right man at the right time.” The central issue is that a major aerial operation against Iran is in the planning stage, and Maj General Halutz is slated to coordinate the aerial bombing raids on Iran. Halutz’s appointment was specifically linked to Israel’s Iran agenda: “As chief of staff, he will in the best position to prepare the military for such a scenario.” March 2005: NATO’s Secretary General was in Jerusalem for follow-up talks with Ariel Sharon and Israel’s military brass, following the joint NATO-Israel military exercise in February. These military cooperation ties are viewed by the Israeli military as a means to “enhance Israel’s deterrence capability regarding potential enemies threatening it, mainly Iran and Syria.” The premise underlying NATO-Israel military cooperation is that Israel is under attack: “The more Israel’s image is strengthened as a country facing enemies who attempt to attack it for no justified reason, the greater will be the possibility that aid will be extended to Israel by NATO. Furthermore, Iran and Syria will have to take into account the possibility that the increasing cooperation between Israel and NATO will strengthen Israel’s links with Turkey, also a member of NATO. Given Turkey’s impressive military potential and its geographic proximity to both Iran and Syria, Israel’s operational options against them, if and when it sees the need, could gain considerable strength. ” (Jaffa Center for Strategic Studies, http://www.tau.ac.il/jcss/sa/v7n4p4Shalom.html ) The Israel-NATO protocol is all the more important because it obligates NATO to align itself with the US-Israeli plan to bomb Iran, as an act of self defense on the part of Israel. It also means that NATO is also involved in the process of military consultations relating to the planned aerial bombing of Iran. It is of course related to the bilateral military cooperation agreement between Israel and Turkey and the likelihood that part of the military operation will be launched from Turkey, which is a member of NATO. Late March 2005: News leaks in Israel indicated an “initial authorization” by Prime Minster Ariel Sharon of an Israeli attack on Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant “if diplomacy failed to stop Iran’s nuclear program”. (The Hindu, 28 March 2005) March-April 2005: The Holding in Israel of Joint US-Israeli military exercises specifically pertaining to the launching of Patriot missiles. US Patriot missile crews stationed in Germany were sent to Israel to participate in the joint Juniper Cobra exercise with the Israeli military. The exercise was described as routine and “unconnected to events in the Middle East”: “As always, we are interested in implementing lessons learned from training exercises.” (UPI, 9 March 2005). April 2005: Donald Rumsfeld (right) was on an official visits to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan. His diplomatic endeavors were described by the Russian media as “literally circling Iran in an attempt to find the best bridgehead for a possible military operation against that country.” In Baku, Azerbaijan Rumsfeld was busy discussing the date for deployment of US troops in Azerbaijan on Iran’s North-Western border. US military bases described as “mobile groups” in Azerbaijan are slated to play a role in a military operation directed against Iran. Azerbaijan is a member of GUUAM, a military cooperation agreement with the US and NATO, which allows for the stationing of US troops in several of the member countries, including Georgia, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. The stated short term objective is to “neutralize Iran”. The longer term objective under the Pentagon’s “Caspian Plan” is to exert military and economic control over the entire Caspian sea basin, with a view to ensuring US authority over oil reserves and pipeline corridors. During his visit in April, Rumsfeld was pushing the US initiative of establishing “American special task forces and military bases to secure US influence in the Caspian region: “Called Caspian Watch, the project stipulates a network of special task forces and police units in the countries of the regions to be used in emergencies including threats to objects of the oil complex and pipelines. Project Caspian Watch will be financed by the United States ($100 million). It will become an advance guard of the US European Command whose zone of responsibility includes the Caspian region. Command center of the project with a powerful radar is to be located in Baku.” ( Defense and Security Russia, April 27, 2005) Rumsfeld’s visit followed shortly after that of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s to Baku. April 2005: Iran signs a military cooperation with Tajikistan, which occupies a strategic position bordering Afghanistan’s Northern frontier. Tajikistan is a member of “The Shanghai Five” military cooperation group, which also includes Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia. Iran also has economic cooperation agreements with Turkmenistan. Mid April 2005: Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon meets George W Bush at his Texas Ranch. Iran is on the agenda of bilateral talks. More significantly, the visit of Ariel Sharon was used to carry out high level talks between US and Israeli military planners pertaining to Iran. Late April 2005. President Vladmir Putin is in Israel on an official visit. He announces Russia’s decision to sell short-range anti-aircraft missiles to Syria and to continue supporting Iran’s nuclear industry. Beneath the gilded surface of international diplomacy, Putin’s timely visit to Israel must be interpreted as “a signal to Israel” regarding its planned aerial attack on Iran. Late April 2005: US pressure in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been exerted with a view to blocking the re-appointment of Mohammed Al Baradei, who according to US officials “is not being tough enough on Iran…” Following US pressures, the vote on the appointment of a new IAEA chief was put off until June. These developments suggest that Washington wants to put forth their own hand-picked nominee prior to launching US-Israeli aerial attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. (See VOA). (In February 2003, Al Baradei along with UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix challenged the (phony) intelligence on WMD presented by the US to the UN Security Council, with a view to justifying the war on Iraq.) Late April 2005. Sale of deadly military hardware to Israel. GBU-28 Buster Bunker Bombs: Coinciding with Putin’s visit to Israel, the US Defence Security Cooperation Agency (Department of Defense) announced the sale of an additional 100 bunker-buster bombs produced by Lockheed Martin to Israel. This decision was viewed by the US media as “a warning to Iran about its nuclear ambitions.” The sale pertains to the larger and more sophisticated “Guided Bomb Unit-28 (GBU-28) BLU-113 Penetrator” (including the WGU-36A/B guidance control unit and support equipment). The GBU-28 is described as “a special weapon for penetrating hardened command centers located deep underground. The fact of the matter is that the GBU-28 is among the World’s most deadly “conventional” weapons used in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, capable of causing thousands of civilian deaths through massive explosions. The Israeli Air Force are slated to use the GBU-28s on their F-15 aircraft. (See text of DSCA news release) Late April 2005- early May: Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (right) in Israel for follow-up talks with Ariel Sharon. He was accompanied by his Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul, who met with senior Israeli military officials. On the official agenda of these talks: joint defense projects, including the joint production of Arrow II Theater Missile Defense and Popeye II missiles. The latter also known as the Have Lite, are advanced small missiles, designed for deployment on fighter planes. Tel Aviv and Ankara decide to establish a hotline to share intelligence. May 2005: Syrian troops scheduled to withdraw from Lebanon, leading to a major shift in the Middle East security situation, in favor of Israel and the US. Iran Surrounded The US has troops and military bases in Turkey, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, and of course Iraq. In other words, Iran is virtually surrounded by US military bases. (see Map below). These countries as well as Turkmenistan, are members of NATO`s partnership for Peace Program and have military cooperation agreements with NATO. Copyright Eric Waddell, Global Research, 2003 In other words, we are dealing with a potentially explosive scenario in which a number of countries, including several former Soviet republics, could be brought into a US led war with Iran. IranAtom.ru, a Russian based news and military analysis group has suggested, in this regard: “since Iranian nuclear objects are scattered all over the country, Israel will need a mass strike with different fly-in and fly-out approaches – Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and other countries… Azerbaijan seriously fears Tehran’s reaction should Baku issue a permit to Israeli aircraft to overfly its territory.” (Defense and Security Russia, 12 April 2005). Concluding remarks The World is at an important crossroads. The Bush Administration has embarked upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity. Iran is the next military target. The planned military operation, which is by no means limited to punitive strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, is part of a project of World domination, a military roadmap, launched at the end of the Cold War. Military action against Iran would directly involve Israel’s participation, which in turn is likely to trigger a broader war throughout the Middle East, not to mention an implosion in the Palestinian occupied territories. Turkey is closely associated with the proposed aerial attacks. Israel is a nuclear power with a sophisticated nuclear arsenal. (See text box below). The use of nuclear weapons by Israel or the US cannot be excluded, particularly in view of the fact that tactical nuclear weapons have now been reclassified as a variant of the conventional bunker buster bombs and are authorized by the US Senate for use in conventional war theaters. (“they are harmless to civilians because the explosion is underground”) In this regard, Israel and the US rather than Iran constitute a nuclear threat. The planned attack on Iran must be understood in relation to the existing active war theaters in the Middle East, namely Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. The conflict could easily spread from the Middle East to the Caspian sea basin. It could also involve the participation of Azerbaijan and Georgia, where US troops are stationed. An attack on Iran would have a direct impact on the resistance movement inside Iraq. It would also put pressure on America’s overstretched military capabilities and resources in both the Iraqi and Afghan war theaters. (The 150,000 US troops in Iraq are already fully engaged and could not be redeployed in the case of a war with Iran.) In other words, the shaky geopolitics of the Central Asia- Middle East region, the three existing war theaters in which America is currently, involved, the direct participation of Israel and Turkey, the structure of US sponsored military alliances, etc. raises the specter of a broader conflict. Moreover, US military action on Iran not only threatens Russian and Chinese interests, which have geopolitical interests in the Caspian sea basin and which have bilateral agreements with Iran. It also backlashes on European oil interests in Iran and is likely to produce major divisions between Western allies, between the US and its European partners as well as within the European Union. Through its participation in NATO, Europe, despite its reluctance, would be brought into the Iran operation. The participation of NATO largely hinges on a military cooperation agreement reached between NATO and Israel. This agreement would bind NATO to defend Israel against Syria and Iran. NATO would therefore support a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and could take on a more active role if Iran were to retaliate following US-Israeli air strikes. Needless to say, the war against Iran is part of a longer term US military agenda which seeks to militarize the entire Caspian sea basin, eventually leading to the destabilization and conquest of the Russian Federation. The Antiwar Movement The antiwar movement must act, consistently, to prevent the next phase of this war from happening. This is no easy matter. The holding of large antiwar rallies will not in itself reverse the tide of war. High ranking officials of the Bush administration, members of the military and the US Congress have been granted the authority to uphold an illegal war agenda. What is required is a grass roots network, a mass movement at national and international levels, which challenges the legitimacy of the military and political actors, and which is ultimately instrumental in unseating those who rule in our name. War criminals occupy positions of authority. The citizenry is galvanized into supporting the rulers, who are “committed to their safety and well-being”. Through media disinformation, war is given a humanitarian mandate. To reverse the tide of war, military bases must be closed down, the war machine (namely the production of advanced weapons systems) must be stopped and the burgeoning police state must be dismantled. The corporate backers and sponsors of war and war crimes must also be targeted including the oil companies, the defense contractors, the financial institutions and the corporate media, which has become an integral part of the war propaganda machine. Antiwar sentiment does not dismantle a war agenda. The war criminals in the US, Israel and Britain must be removed from high office. What is needed is to reveal the true face of the American Empire and the underlying criminalization of US foreign policy, which uses the “war on terrorism” and the threat of Al Qaeda to galvanize public opinion in support of a global war agenda. Israel’s Nuclear Capabilities With between 200 and 500 thermonuclear weapons and a sophisticated delivery system, Israel has quietly supplanted Britain as the World’s 5th Largest nuclear power, and may currently rival France and China in the size and sophistication of its nuclear arsenal. Although dwarfed by the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia, each possessing over 10,000 nuclear weapons, Israel nonetheless is a major nuclear power, and should be publicly recognized as such. Today, estimates of the Israeli nuclear arsenal range from a minimum of 200 to a maximum of about 500. Whatever the number, there is little doubt that Israeli nukes are among the world’s most sophisticated, largely designed for “war fighting” in the Middle East. A staple of the Israeli nuclear arsenal are “neutron bombs,” miniaturized thermonuclear bombs designed to maximize deadly gamma radiation while minimizing blast effects and long term radiation- in essence designed to kill people while leaving property intact.(16) Weapons include ballistic missiles and bombers capable of reaching Moscow… The bombs themselves range in size from “city busters” larger than the Hiroshima Bomb to tactical mini nukes. The Israeli arsenal of weapons of mass destruction clearly dwarfs the actual or potential arsenals of all other Middle Eastern states combined, and is vastly greater than any conceivable need for “deterrence.” Many Middle East Peace activists have been reluctant to discuss, let alone challenge, the Israeli monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region, often leading to incomplete and uninformed analyses and flawed action strategies. Placing the issue of Israeli weapons of mass destruction directly and honestly on the table and action agenda would have several salutary effects. First, it would expose a primary destabilizing dynamic driving the Middle East arms race and compelling the region’s states to each seek their own “deterrent.” Second, it would expose the grotesque double standard which sees the U.S. and Europe on the one hand condemning Iraq, Iran and Syria for developing weapons of mass destruction, while simultaneously protecting and enabling the principal culprit. Third, exposing Israel’s nuclear strategy would focus international public attention, resulting in increased pressure to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction and negotiate a just peace in good faith. Finally, a nuclear free Israel would make a Nuclear Free Middle East and a comprehensive regional peace agreement much more likely. Unless and until the world community confronts Israel over its covert nuclear program it is unlikely that there will be any meaningful resolution of the Israeli/Arab conflict, a fact that Israel may be counting on as the Sharon era dawns. From John Steinbach, Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal, Global Research https://www.globalresearch.ca/planned-us-israeli-attack-on-iran-2/5615443
    WWW.GLOBALRESEARCH.CA
    A Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran is Contemplated
    Introduction We stand in Solidarity with Palestine. But we must recognize that the United States Military and Intelligence apparatus is firmly behind Israel’s genocide directed against the People of Palestine. . And this must be part of the solidarity campaign, namely to Reveal the Truth regarding Washington’s insidious role, which is part of a carefully planned military agenda directed against Palestine …
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  • The death of Al-Shifa Hospital, the last bastion of humanity in northern Gaza
    People are dead on the streets as hospital staff hear people crying for help after being shot at. When medical workers attempt to go out and save them, they are also targeted and killed. No one is left to document the scale of the genocide.

    Tareq S. HajjajNovember 13, 2023
    Shifa hospital NICU, as premature babies are grouped together to keep them warm, November 2023 (Photo: Social Media)
    Shifa hospital NICU, as premature babies are grouped together to keep them warm, November 2023 (Photo: Social Media)
    This dispatch was relayed by Mondoweiss Gaza Correspondent Tareq Hajjaj via voice note.

    Two days ago, the injured left Al-Shifa Hospital with wounds still bleeding, some on wheelchairs, some pulled by cart. Those who arrived in the south a few days ago reported that Al-Shifa Hospital’s administration had urged them to flee since it would soon no longer be operational. By now, it has completely closed down.

    These directives did not come out of nowhere. They were based on the hospital administration’s expectation of what would transpire during the ground invasion, given Israel’s systematic policy of targeting medical facilities. In the days leading up to the Al-Shifa exodus, Israel’s forces continued to close in, bombing and shelling the neighboring buildings and outer parts of the hospital and launching missiles into the hospital’s courtyard where refugees were sleeping, cutting them up into pieces.

    The tanks continued to approach Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, until they were right at its gate.

    Ministry of Health spokespeople remain at Al-Shifa, in the hopes that injuries and dead bodies would reach the hospital, where they could be documented and tallied. These hopes have since been dashed, as no one is allowed to move outdoors or reach the hospital for treatment or refuge.

    The past few hours have been the most catastrophic for Gaza’s northern hospitals, which include Al-Shifa, Al-Quds Hospital, Rantisi Hospital for Pediatrics, and Nasr Hospital in Gaza City, and the Indonesian Hospital in the north, which was targeted last week with shelling and “firebelts” meant to force medical staff, patients, and refugees to evacuate.

    Medical workers have suffered the most during the recent rounds. But many medical teams refused to leave the hospitals, staying behind to take care of patients in ICUs and NICUS who could not move without dying. This includes 48 premature babies whose incubators and respirators have since failed.

    Only yesterday, it was announced that two of these infants have died due to the lack of oxygen and heating. Photos began circulating of remaining hospital staff swaddling the remaining infants and laying them close to one another to conserve heat and keep them warm.

    ‘We can see injured people. We hear them crying for help, but we cannot do anything.’

    The Palestinian Authority Minister of Health, Mai Keileh, said that medical staff are no longer able to move between buildings to carry out their work. Attack drones hovering over the medical complex target anything that moves. It has led to the pile-up of corpses in the hospital’s courtyard, and anyone who tries to go out to collect them is also killed. Keileh stated that medical staff has been unable to bury over 100 martyrs, and their bodies have begun to rot in the courtyard, while stray dogs are now beginning to eat at their flesh.

    A Gaza government spokesperson yesterday said that Israeli army snipers stationed in nearby buildings have shot a patient in his bed through the window, in addition to a maintenance worker who tried to rewire hospital electrical lines in an attempt to restore power to a part of the hospital. The same government source stated that a group of medical staff attempted to leave the hospital while waving white flags and made their way to the hospital’s main entrance, but that drones also targeted them directly, killing most. Those who survived the initial blast lay on the ground for hours, bleeding to death and screaming for help, until they, too, died.

    Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported a similar incidents, quoting the testimony of Dr. Mohammed Obeid at Al-Shifa:

    “We’re on the fourth floor. There’s a sniper who attacked four patients inside the hospital. One of the patients has a gunshot wound directly in his neck, and he is a quadriplegic, and the other one [was shot] in the abdomen. ”

    MSF also confirmed government reports of the injured left to bleed to death in the courtyard. One MSF staff member described the scene:

    “There are dead people on the streets. We see people being shot at. We can see injured people. We hear them crying for help, but we cannot do anything. It is too dangerous to go outside.”

    The Mahdi maternity hospital in northern Gaza was also targeted with bombardment and shelling. People who stood near windows were shot by Israeli snipers, while Israeli drones hovering overhead targeted anything that moved in the hospital’s courtyard, even medical teams, who were trapped inside.

    Dr. Basel Mahdi, who works at the hospital, wrote online that “No one dies before their time. But there are many who die without dignity.”

    “May God never forgive you,” his letter said, addressing Arab heads of state. “You betrayed us. You betrayed your Arab identity.”

    Half an hour after posting the message, Dr. Mahdi was killed when he tried to leave the hospital.

    No one left to document the genocide

    The medical system in northern Gaza has subsequently collapsed. No hospital or medical center is operational. The likely hundreds of thousands of civilians who have remained in the north now have no place to seek treatment for their wounded, which pile up daily.

    And they have been met with the same treatment as the hospital staff. When someone attempts to move and flee south, they are shot or bombed where they stand.

    In addition, the invasion of the Israeli troops and the raiding of homes with residents still inside has opened the door for further violations. Dr. Muhammad Nizam Ziyara wrote a post on social media about his family’s ordeal in the al-Nasr neighborhood:

    “Yesterday, Israeli occupation forces entered our home in the Nasr neighborhood in Gaza after blowing up our house’s front door. They gathered the entire family in a single room, and then proceeded to beat and abuse everyone, and turned the house into a military base. The soldiers then separated the women and young children the men and boys, who they continued to beat before taking them to the nearby UNRWA school. We haven’t received word of their fate for the past 24 hours. The women and children were taken out of the house and used as human shields, forcing them to walk in front of the military tanks and head to the southern part [of the Nasr neighborhood]. As of now, we do not have any word of their fate either.”

    Dr. Ziyara concluded his post by asking anyone who might have information about his family’s whereabouts to contact him.

    Israel’s claims that it is targeting these hospitals because Hamas is allegedly using them for military purposes have been repeatedly denied by hospital administrations, who have said that they are prepared for an international delegation to conduct a search of the hospitals and their grounds for evidence of such alleged underground tunnels and command centers. The only Israeli response has been more shelling and bombardment, murdering anyone who attempts escape.

    Perhaps when it becomes clear that Israel’s claims about Al-Shifa are baseless, it will find an excuse to level and destroy this remaining bastion of humanity in Gaza. Along with it, it seeks to kill the remaining staff of the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is responsible for documenting and tallying the fatalities and the wounded.

    In doing so, Israel seeks to silence the Ministry as well as the journalists still embedded in the hospital, causing a complete information blackout so that Israel can commit its massacres with no one to see. As more people are killed and left to decompose out in the open, no one will be left to document the scale of the unfolding genocide.

    Before you go – we need your support

    At Mondoweiss, we understand the power of telling Palestinian stories. For 17 years, we have pushed back when the mainstream media published lies or echoed politicians’ hateful rhetoric. Now, Palestinian voices are more important than ever.

    Our traffic has increased ten times since October 7, and we need your help to cover our increased expenses.

    Support our journalists with a donation today.


    https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/the-death-of-al-shifa-hospital-the-last-bastion-of-humanity-in-northern-gaza/
    The death of Al-Shifa Hospital, the last bastion of humanity in northern Gaza People are dead on the streets as hospital staff hear people crying for help after being shot at. When medical workers attempt to go out and save them, they are also targeted and killed. No one is left to document the scale of the genocide. Tareq S. HajjajNovember 13, 2023 Shifa hospital NICU, as premature babies are grouped together to keep them warm, November 2023 (Photo: Social Media) Shifa hospital NICU, as premature babies are grouped together to keep them warm, November 2023 (Photo: Social Media) This dispatch was relayed by Mondoweiss Gaza Correspondent Tareq Hajjaj via voice note. Two days ago, the injured left Al-Shifa Hospital with wounds still bleeding, some on wheelchairs, some pulled by cart. Those who arrived in the south a few days ago reported that Al-Shifa Hospital’s administration had urged them to flee since it would soon no longer be operational. By now, it has completely closed down. These directives did not come out of nowhere. They were based on the hospital administration’s expectation of what would transpire during the ground invasion, given Israel’s systematic policy of targeting medical facilities. In the days leading up to the Al-Shifa exodus, Israel’s forces continued to close in, bombing and shelling the neighboring buildings and outer parts of the hospital and launching missiles into the hospital’s courtyard where refugees were sleeping, cutting them up into pieces. The tanks continued to approach Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, until they were right at its gate. Ministry of Health spokespeople remain at Al-Shifa, in the hopes that injuries and dead bodies would reach the hospital, where they could be documented and tallied. These hopes have since been dashed, as no one is allowed to move outdoors or reach the hospital for treatment or refuge. The past few hours have been the most catastrophic for Gaza’s northern hospitals, which include Al-Shifa, Al-Quds Hospital, Rantisi Hospital for Pediatrics, and Nasr Hospital in Gaza City, and the Indonesian Hospital in the north, which was targeted last week with shelling and “firebelts” meant to force medical staff, patients, and refugees to evacuate. Medical workers have suffered the most during the recent rounds. But many medical teams refused to leave the hospitals, staying behind to take care of patients in ICUs and NICUS who could not move without dying. This includes 48 premature babies whose incubators and respirators have since failed. Only yesterday, it was announced that two of these infants have died due to the lack of oxygen and heating. Photos began circulating of remaining hospital staff swaddling the remaining infants and laying them close to one another to conserve heat and keep them warm. ‘We can see injured people. We hear them crying for help, but we cannot do anything.’ The Palestinian Authority Minister of Health, Mai Keileh, said that medical staff are no longer able to move between buildings to carry out their work. Attack drones hovering over the medical complex target anything that moves. It has led to the pile-up of corpses in the hospital’s courtyard, and anyone who tries to go out to collect them is also killed. Keileh stated that medical staff has been unable to bury over 100 martyrs, and their bodies have begun to rot in the courtyard, while stray dogs are now beginning to eat at their flesh. A Gaza government spokesperson yesterday said that Israeli army snipers stationed in nearby buildings have shot a patient in his bed through the window, in addition to a maintenance worker who tried to rewire hospital electrical lines in an attempt to restore power to a part of the hospital. The same government source stated that a group of medical staff attempted to leave the hospital while waving white flags and made their way to the hospital’s main entrance, but that drones also targeted them directly, killing most. Those who survived the initial blast lay on the ground for hours, bleeding to death and screaming for help, until they, too, died. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported a similar incidents, quoting the testimony of Dr. Mohammed Obeid at Al-Shifa: “We’re on the fourth floor. There’s a sniper who attacked four patients inside the hospital. One of the patients has a gunshot wound directly in his neck, and he is a quadriplegic, and the other one [was shot] in the abdomen. ” MSF also confirmed government reports of the injured left to bleed to death in the courtyard. One MSF staff member described the scene: “There are dead people on the streets. We see people being shot at. We can see injured people. We hear them crying for help, but we cannot do anything. It is too dangerous to go outside.” The Mahdi maternity hospital in northern Gaza was also targeted with bombardment and shelling. People who stood near windows were shot by Israeli snipers, while Israeli drones hovering overhead targeted anything that moved in the hospital’s courtyard, even medical teams, who were trapped inside. Dr. Basel Mahdi, who works at the hospital, wrote online that “No one dies before their time. But there are many who die without dignity.” “May God never forgive you,” his letter said, addressing Arab heads of state. “You betrayed us. You betrayed your Arab identity.” Half an hour after posting the message, Dr. Mahdi was killed when he tried to leave the hospital. No one left to document the genocide The medical system in northern Gaza has subsequently collapsed. No hospital or medical center is operational. The likely hundreds of thousands of civilians who have remained in the north now have no place to seek treatment for their wounded, which pile up daily. And they have been met with the same treatment as the hospital staff. When someone attempts to move and flee south, they are shot or bombed where they stand. In addition, the invasion of the Israeli troops and the raiding of homes with residents still inside has opened the door for further violations. Dr. Muhammad Nizam Ziyara wrote a post on social media about his family’s ordeal in the al-Nasr neighborhood: “Yesterday, Israeli occupation forces entered our home in the Nasr neighborhood in Gaza after blowing up our house’s front door. They gathered the entire family in a single room, and then proceeded to beat and abuse everyone, and turned the house into a military base. The soldiers then separated the women and young children the men and boys, who they continued to beat before taking them to the nearby UNRWA school. We haven’t received word of their fate for the past 24 hours. The women and children were taken out of the house and used as human shields, forcing them to walk in front of the military tanks and head to the southern part [of the Nasr neighborhood]. As of now, we do not have any word of their fate either.” Dr. Ziyara concluded his post by asking anyone who might have information about his family’s whereabouts to contact him. Israel’s claims that it is targeting these hospitals because Hamas is allegedly using them for military purposes have been repeatedly denied by hospital administrations, who have said that they are prepared for an international delegation to conduct a search of the hospitals and their grounds for evidence of such alleged underground tunnels and command centers. The only Israeli response has been more shelling and bombardment, murdering anyone who attempts escape. Perhaps when it becomes clear that Israel’s claims about Al-Shifa are baseless, it will find an excuse to level and destroy this remaining bastion of humanity in Gaza. Along with it, it seeks to kill the remaining staff of the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is responsible for documenting and tallying the fatalities and the wounded. In doing so, Israel seeks to silence the Ministry as well as the journalists still embedded in the hospital, causing a complete information blackout so that Israel can commit its massacres with no one to see. As more people are killed and left to decompose out in the open, no one will be left to document the scale of the unfolding genocide. Before you go – we need your support At Mondoweiss, we understand the power of telling Palestinian stories. For 17 years, we have pushed back when the mainstream media published lies or echoed politicians’ hateful rhetoric. Now, Palestinian voices are more important than ever. Our traffic has increased ten times since October 7, and we need your help to cover our increased expenses. Support our journalists with a donation today. https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/the-death-of-al-shifa-hospital-the-last-bastion-of-humanity-in-northern-gaza/
    MONDOWEISS.NET
    The death of Al-Shifa Hospital, the last bastion of humanity in northern Gaza
    People are dead on the streets as hospital staff hear people crying for help after being shot at. When medical workers attempt to go out and save them, they are also targeted and killed. No one is left to document the scale of the genocide.
    0 Commentarios 0 Acciones 4746 Views
  • U.S. readies plans for mass evacuations if Gaza war escalates
    Officials said that the more than 600,000 Americans living in Israel and Lebanon are of particular concern, but they stressed that an operation of such magnitude is a worst-case scenario

    Yasmeen Abutaleb

    The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower departs Norfolk with its coterie of escort ships on Oct. 14 in response to Israel-Gaza War. (Anderson W. Branch/AFP/Getty Images)
    correction

    A previous version of this article incorrectly said that Hezbollah has controlled Lebanon since 1992. It entered parliament that year. The article has been corrected.

    The Biden administration is preparing for the possibility that hundreds of thousands of American citizens will require evacuation from the Middle East if the bloodshed in Gaza cannot be contained, according to four officials familiar with the U.S. government’s contingency planning.

    The specter of such an operation comes as Israeli forces, aided by U.S. weapons and military advisers, prepare for what is widely expected to be a perilous ground offensive against Hamas militants responsible for the stunning cross-border attack that has reignited hostilities. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail internal deliberations, said Americans living in Israel and neighboring Lebanon are of particular concern, though they stressed that an evacuation of that magnitude is considered a worst-case scenario and that other outcomes are seen as more likely.

    Still, one official said, it “would be irresponsible not to have a plan for everything.”

    What a ground war in Gaza could look like

    The administration, despite its forceful public support for Israel, is deeply alarmed by the prospect of escalation, and in recent days it has turned its attention in part to the complicated logistics of abruptly having to relocate a large number of people, according to three people familiar with the discussions. There were about 600,000 U.S. citizens in Israel and another 86,000 believed to be in Lebanon when Hamas attacked, according to State Department estimates.

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    The concern in Lebanon is chiefly over Hezbollah, a political party and militant group that, along with allies, currently controls the largest number of parliamentary seats. It entered parliament in 1992. It has long accepted training and weapons from Iran, prompting concerns that it could attack Israel from the north, creating a two-front war that would stretch Israeli forces. Already, there have been skirmishes along their shared border.

    Israeli tanks fired shells toward southern Lebanon on Oct. 15, following reports of a strike launched from within Lebanon against the Israeli town of Shtula. (Video: Reuters)
    “This has become a real issue,” one official said. “The administration is very, very, very worried that this thing is going to get out of hand.”

    The administration’s concern extends beyond those two countries, as officials watch the street protests that have spread across the Arab world, putting both U.S. personnel and citizens in the region at heightened risk. The bombardment of Gaza has inflamed regional fury at Israel and its treatment of Palestinians — an issue some officials believed no longer carried as much importance in the Arab world.

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    “The street to a large extent is now in charge,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former official in the Clinton administration.

    “We were told for the last 10 years that the Arab world and Muslim world didn’t care about Palestine anymore, and Abraham Accords were proof of that,” Riedel added, referring to agreements, signed by the governments of Sudan, Morocco, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, aimed at normalizing relations with Israel. “Well, Palestine has come back. I don’t think it ever went away.”

    More than 5,000 people in Gaza, mostly civilians and children, have been killed amid unrelenting Israeli airstrikes since the Oct. 7 attacks, Palestinian health officials say.

    How the Biden administration tried to slow Israel’s invasion of Gaza

    Top U.S. officials have not wanted to discuss such contingency planning in public, hoping to avoid setting off a panic among Americans in the region. But their posture has shifted in recent days to convey the anxiety about other actors entering the conflict.

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    Last week, the State Department issued an advisory to all U.S. citizens worldwide “to exercise increased caution” due to “increased tensions in various locations around the world, the potential for terrorist attacks, [and] demonstrations or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests.”

    The warning was in response to demonstrations that have erupted in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict and broader anger in the Arab world over Washington’s full political, economic and military backing of Israel.

    Depending on the scale of a potential U.S. evacuation, it could be more difficult than any previous operations in recent memory, experts said. It could involve Air Force aircraft or Navy warships, which have surged to the region this month.

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    “With 600,000 Americans in Israel and threats to other Americans across the region, it’s hard to think of an evacuation that might compare to this in scale, scope and complexity,” said Suzanne Maloney, the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

    “The sort of advisories the State Department has put out lately have been fairly blunt,” she added.

    On Monday, the Pentagon signaled, too, that it is bracing for a significant increase in attacks on U.S. troops in the Middle East, and the department singled out Iran for its extensive sponsorship of militant groups with a long history of using rockets and drones to target American military positions. In response, Pentagon officials said, they are surging additional missile-defense systems to the region.

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    Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that a “broader escalation” is possible “in the days ahead.” Senior military leaders, he said, are taking “all necessary measures” to safeguard U.S. personnel.

    Particularly vulnerable are the estimated 3,400 troops deployed in Iraq and Syria, where earlier in the day U.S. personnel based near the Jordan border intercepted at least two one-way attack drones, officials said. Americans operating in those countries have been targeted for years by Iranian-backed militias, including Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraq-based group that claimed responsibility for some of the previous attacks disclosed over the last week.

    U.S. intercepts missiles near Yemen as troops face drone attacks in Middle East

    “We don’t necessarily see that Iran has explicitly ordered them to take these kinds of attacks,” Ryder said. “That said, by virtue of the fact that they are supported by Iran, we will ultimately hold Iran responsible.”

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    It’s unclear how many times deployed personnel have come under fire since the Israel-Hamas crisis began Oct. 7. Officials said that the Pentagon was compiling a list of confirmed incidents but that the effort had been hampered by what one senior defense official called the profusion of “disinformation and misinformation.”

    No U.S. personnel are known to have been killed or seriously injured in any of the spillover violence. An American contractor in Iraq did suffer a fatal heart attack last week as troops and others at the Ain al-Asad air base raced to take cover from what proved to be a false alarm of an incoming attack.

    Sarah Dadouch in Beirut and Missy Ryan contributed to this report.
    U.S. readies plans for mass evacuations if Gaza war escalates Officials said that the more than 600,000 Americans living in Israel and Lebanon are of particular concern, but they stressed that an operation of such magnitude is a worst-case scenario Yasmeen Abutaleb The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower departs Norfolk with its coterie of escort ships on Oct. 14 in response to Israel-Gaza War. (Anderson W. Branch/AFP/Getty Images) correction A previous version of this article incorrectly said that Hezbollah has controlled Lebanon since 1992. It entered parliament that year. The article has been corrected. The Biden administration is preparing for the possibility that hundreds of thousands of American citizens will require evacuation from the Middle East if the bloodshed in Gaza cannot be contained, according to four officials familiar with the U.S. government’s contingency planning. The specter of such an operation comes as Israeli forces, aided by U.S. weapons and military advisers, prepare for what is widely expected to be a perilous ground offensive against Hamas militants responsible for the stunning cross-border attack that has reignited hostilities. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail internal deliberations, said Americans living in Israel and neighboring Lebanon are of particular concern, though they stressed that an evacuation of that magnitude is considered a worst-case scenario and that other outcomes are seen as more likely. Still, one official said, it “would be irresponsible not to have a plan for everything.” What a ground war in Gaza could look like The administration, despite its forceful public support for Israel, is deeply alarmed by the prospect of escalation, and in recent days it has turned its attention in part to the complicated logistics of abruptly having to relocate a large number of people, according to three people familiar with the discussions. There were about 600,000 U.S. citizens in Israel and another 86,000 believed to be in Lebanon when Hamas attacked, according to State Department estimates. Story continues below advertisement The concern in Lebanon is chiefly over Hezbollah, a political party and militant group that, along with allies, currently controls the largest number of parliamentary seats. It entered parliament in 1992. It has long accepted training and weapons from Iran, prompting concerns that it could attack Israel from the north, creating a two-front war that would stretch Israeli forces. Already, there have been skirmishes along their shared border. Israeli tanks fired shells toward southern Lebanon on Oct. 15, following reports of a strike launched from within Lebanon against the Israeli town of Shtula. (Video: Reuters) “This has become a real issue,” one official said. “The administration is very, very, very worried that this thing is going to get out of hand.” The administration’s concern extends beyond those two countries, as officials watch the street protests that have spread across the Arab world, putting both U.S. personnel and citizens in the region at heightened risk. The bombardment of Gaza has inflamed regional fury at Israel and its treatment of Palestinians — an issue some officials believed no longer carried as much importance in the Arab world. Story continues below advertisement “The street to a large extent is now in charge,” said Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former official in the Clinton administration. “We were told for the last 10 years that the Arab world and Muslim world didn’t care about Palestine anymore, and Abraham Accords were proof of that,” Riedel added, referring to agreements, signed by the governments of Sudan, Morocco, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, aimed at normalizing relations with Israel. “Well, Palestine has come back. I don’t think it ever went away.” More than 5,000 people in Gaza, mostly civilians and children, have been killed amid unrelenting Israeli airstrikes since the Oct. 7 attacks, Palestinian health officials say. How the Biden administration tried to slow Israel’s invasion of Gaza Top U.S. officials have not wanted to discuss such contingency planning in public, hoping to avoid setting off a panic among Americans in the region. But their posture has shifted in recent days to convey the anxiety about other actors entering the conflict. Story continues below advertisement Last week, the State Department issued an advisory to all U.S. citizens worldwide “to exercise increased caution” due to “increased tensions in various locations around the world, the potential for terrorist attacks, [and] demonstrations or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests.” The warning was in response to demonstrations that have erupted in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict and broader anger in the Arab world over Washington’s full political, economic and military backing of Israel. Depending on the scale of a potential U.S. evacuation, it could be more difficult than any previous operations in recent memory, experts said. It could involve Air Force aircraft or Navy warships, which have surged to the region this month. Story continues below advertisement “With 600,000 Americans in Israel and threats to other Americans across the region, it’s hard to think of an evacuation that might compare to this in scale, scope and complexity,” said Suzanne Maloney, the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “The sort of advisories the State Department has put out lately have been fairly blunt,” she added. On Monday, the Pentagon signaled, too, that it is bracing for a significant increase in attacks on U.S. troops in the Middle East, and the department singled out Iran for its extensive sponsorship of militant groups with a long history of using rockets and drones to target American military positions. In response, Pentagon officials said, they are surging additional missile-defense systems to the region. Story continues below advertisement Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that a “broader escalation” is possible “in the days ahead.” Senior military leaders, he said, are taking “all necessary measures” to safeguard U.S. personnel. Particularly vulnerable are the estimated 3,400 troops deployed in Iraq and Syria, where earlier in the day U.S. personnel based near the Jordan border intercepted at least two one-way attack drones, officials said. Americans operating in those countries have been targeted for years by Iranian-backed militias, including Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraq-based group that claimed responsibility for some of the previous attacks disclosed over the last week. U.S. intercepts missiles near Yemen as troops face drone attacks in Middle East “We don’t necessarily see that Iran has explicitly ordered them to take these kinds of attacks,” Ryder said. “That said, by virtue of the fact that they are supported by Iran, we will ultimately hold Iran responsible.” Story continues below advertisement It’s unclear how many times deployed personnel have come under fire since the Israel-Hamas crisis began Oct. 7. Officials said that the Pentagon was compiling a list of confirmed incidents but that the effort had been hampered by what one senior defense official called the profusion of “disinformation and misinformation.” No U.S. personnel are known to have been killed or seriously injured in any of the spillover violence. An American contractor in Iraq did suffer a fatal heart attack last week as troops and others at the Ain al-Asad air base raced to take cover from what proved to be a false alarm of an incoming attack. Sarah Dadouch in Beirut and Missy Ryan contributed to this report.
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  • Occupied Melilla, Occupied Palestine

    Oct 24, 2023 · 5 min read

    Occupied Melilla, Occupied Palestine

    A Tale of Two Settler Colonies

    Kevin Barrett



    The president of Melilla calls for coexistence after protests against Israel: “We are all a united people”: A demonstration of several hundred people in support of Palestine includes moments of tension in front of the city's main synagogue. The Jewish community denounces several “anti-Semitic episodes” in Catalonia and Madrid

    The two-hour taxi ride from Saidia, Morocco to Melilla, Spain was expensive—almost $50 US—but the driver, Si Driss, was loquacious, and educated enough to discuss history and current events in an Arabic register that I could understand. When I half-jokingly referred to Melilla al-muhtala, bihal al-Quds al-muhtala(Occupied Melilla, like Occupied Jerusalem) he laughed and shook his head. The artificial borders that humans draw on the surface of the earth, Driss told me, are ridiculous. And not just national borders: Rich people who buy up what could be the best agricultural land to build resorts and golf courses, and stake out the boundaries to keep poor farmers out, are just as bad as the heads of nation states claiming this or that patch of ground for this or that tribe.

    Driss’s utopian “imagine there’s no countries” view isn’t universally shared. For Moroccans, the notion of “Occupied Melilla” is real. Spain is occupying a basically Moroccan city. Yet it doesn’t bother them nearly as much as the Zionist occupation of Palestine bothers them. (Not to mention how much it bothers the Palestinians!)

    Why aren’t Moroccans forming resistance organizations to fight the occupation of Melilla, the way the Palestinian resistance fights the Zionists? After all, the two situations are not entirely dissimilar. In both cases, European settler colonists, protected by European militaries, swarmed into patches of ground on the Muslim shore of the Mediterranean. Locals resisted. Blood was shed. The settler colonists (unlike those in French Algeria, British Kenya and Tanzania and Rhodesia) refused to close up shop.

    But today, Melilla and Palestine are not just at opposite ends of the Mediterranean; they are also poles apart in their relationships between European settlers and Muslim locals. Palestine is in the midst of an attempted genocide by the settlers against the natives, one that will likely backfire and lead to the destruction of the Zionist project (and possibly many of its adherents). Whereas in Melilla, a no-doubt-exaggerated convivencia (“living together”) is not just a slogan, but to some extent a reality.*

    It’s worth noting that convivencia or no, Melilla is the most right-wing Catholic city in Spain. It was the last city to take down its statue of Gen. Francisco Franco, who is seen today as a historical villain not only by Moroccans due to Spanish atrocities in the Rif Wars, but also by today’s liberal majority of Spaniards.

    And it gets worse. Melilla was founded in the wake of one of the worst ethnic cleansings in history: The destruction of al-Andalus, multi-confessional Muslim-ruled Spain, culminating in the fall of Grenada in 1492 and expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish captured Melilla in 1497 and used it as a base against Muslim attempts to resist the expulsions. The fortress (Melilla la Vieja) and the larger city that grew up around it have been anti-Moroccan Spanish strongholds ever since. Since what passes for Spanish identity today bases itself on the Catholics’ defeat and expulsion of the Muslims of al-Andalus, there’s plenty of historical grounds for conflict.

    Based on that history, and the right-wing Catholic identity politics of many Spanish settlers in Melilla, we might expect to find a fair bit of hatred and violence here. But that isn’t the case. The only smattering of remotely “political” violence in Melilla is the occasional mistreatment of mostly sub-Saharan African migrants who try to climb the ever-more-militarized fence that separates Morocco from Spain. (The Spanish and Moroccan authorities cooperate in that mistreatment.)

    So despite carrying comparable amounts of historical baggage, the difference between peaceful Melilla and blood-soaked Palestine couldn’t be more stark. What accounts for that difference?

    I think the main factor is that Spain’s attitude, and Spanish Melillans’ attitude, toward their occupation is relatively reasonable and recognizes the humanity of the Other; whereas Zionists are fanatical extremists who dehumanize their victims. The Spanish basically say: “Okay, we stole Melilla, and did other unpleasant things, but that was long ago, and since we gave back most of what we stole, please work with us and we’ll come to some kind of reasonably generous arrangement. We’ll find a way to make sure that you’ll do better with us here than you would if we left.”

    The Spanish have facilitated “irregular trade,” i.e. smuggling, which provides a way for Moroccans in the region to make a living. They permit residents of the neighboring Moroccan city of Nador to cross the border at will. They have granted full Spanish citizenship to the ethnically-Moroccan Muslims of Melilla. (Muslims now constitute the majority of Melilla’s population, and Islam is becoming an indigenous religion of Spain due to conversions and intermarriage.) And Spain has allowed almost a million Moroccans to live on the Peninsula legally, alongside an unknown number of illegal ones. Hardworking Moroccans in Spain send back remittances to their families, which keeps Morocco’s economy afloat.

    The Zionists, for their part, have no interest in being generous or even reasonable. They are going to keep right on stealing and killing and expelling—“if I don’t steal it someone else gonna steal it” goes the Israeli proverb—and they are going to keep treating the locals as fourth-class-citizens at best, animals at worst.

    I got a taste of the generosity of Melillans yesterday, literally, as I wandered around trying to find my AirBnb. I don’t use a cell phone, and the cafés with wireless were closed for siesta, so my only recourse was to accost real live human beings in half-broken Spanish lapsing into mixtures of French and Moroccan Arabic and ask them for help finding Commandante Royo Street. As it turned out nobody had ever heard of such a street, but several took the time to put up with my linguistic inadequacies, look it up on their cell phones, and point me in this or that direction. After three or four pointers and still no luck, I was getting desperate, when some folks barbecuing shish kebobs on the sidewalk—they appeared to include people of both Spanish and Moroccan ethnicity—insisted that I join the party. Fortified by shish kebobs, orange soda, and conversation with friendly people who put up with my bad Spanish, I hit the streets again and found the place I was looking for.

    *A staple of Melilla’s convivencia rhetoric is the reference to “four cultures.” The odd thing is that two of those four cultures—the Muslims and the Catholics—together comprise about 98% of the population, while the Jews and Hindus together are only 2%.
    Occupied Melilla, Occupied Palestine Oct 24, 2023 · 5 min read Occupied Melilla, Occupied Palestine A Tale of Two Settler Colonies Kevin Barrett The president of Melilla calls for coexistence after protests against Israel: “We are all a united people”: A demonstration of several hundred people in support of Palestine includes moments of tension in front of the city's main synagogue. The Jewish community denounces several “anti-Semitic episodes” in Catalonia and Madrid The two-hour taxi ride from Saidia, Morocco to Melilla, Spain was expensive—almost $50 US—but the driver, Si Driss, was loquacious, and educated enough to discuss history and current events in an Arabic register that I could understand. When I half-jokingly referred to Melilla al-muhtala, bihal al-Quds al-muhtala(Occupied Melilla, like Occupied Jerusalem) he laughed and shook his head. The artificial borders that humans draw on the surface of the earth, Driss told me, are ridiculous. And not just national borders: Rich people who buy up what could be the best agricultural land to build resorts and golf courses, and stake out the boundaries to keep poor farmers out, are just as bad as the heads of nation states claiming this or that patch of ground for this or that tribe. Driss’s utopian “imagine there’s no countries” view isn’t universally shared. For Moroccans, the notion of “Occupied Melilla” is real. Spain is occupying a basically Moroccan city. Yet it doesn’t bother them nearly as much as the Zionist occupation of Palestine bothers them. (Not to mention how much it bothers the Palestinians!) Why aren’t Moroccans forming resistance organizations to fight the occupation of Melilla, the way the Palestinian resistance fights the Zionists? After all, the two situations are not entirely dissimilar. In both cases, European settler colonists, protected by European militaries, swarmed into patches of ground on the Muslim shore of the Mediterranean. Locals resisted. Blood was shed. The settler colonists (unlike those in French Algeria, British Kenya and Tanzania and Rhodesia) refused to close up shop. But today, Melilla and Palestine are not just at opposite ends of the Mediterranean; they are also poles apart in their relationships between European settlers and Muslim locals. Palestine is in the midst of an attempted genocide by the settlers against the natives, one that will likely backfire and lead to the destruction of the Zionist project (and possibly many of its adherents). Whereas in Melilla, a no-doubt-exaggerated convivencia (“living together”) is not just a slogan, but to some extent a reality.* It’s worth noting that convivencia or no, Melilla is the most right-wing Catholic city in Spain. It was the last city to take down its statue of Gen. Francisco Franco, who is seen today as a historical villain not only by Moroccans due to Spanish atrocities in the Rif Wars, but also by today’s liberal majority of Spaniards. And it gets worse. Melilla was founded in the wake of one of the worst ethnic cleansings in history: The destruction of al-Andalus, multi-confessional Muslim-ruled Spain, culminating in the fall of Grenada in 1492 and expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish captured Melilla in 1497 and used it as a base against Muslim attempts to resist the expulsions. The fortress (Melilla la Vieja) and the larger city that grew up around it have been anti-Moroccan Spanish strongholds ever since. Since what passes for Spanish identity today bases itself on the Catholics’ defeat and expulsion of the Muslims of al-Andalus, there’s plenty of historical grounds for conflict. Based on that history, and the right-wing Catholic identity politics of many Spanish settlers in Melilla, we might expect to find a fair bit of hatred and violence here. But that isn’t the case. The only smattering of remotely “political” violence in Melilla is the occasional mistreatment of mostly sub-Saharan African migrants who try to climb the ever-more-militarized fence that separates Morocco from Spain. (The Spanish and Moroccan authorities cooperate in that mistreatment.) So despite carrying comparable amounts of historical baggage, the difference between peaceful Melilla and blood-soaked Palestine couldn’t be more stark. What accounts for that difference? I think the main factor is that Spain’s attitude, and Spanish Melillans’ attitude, toward their occupation is relatively reasonable and recognizes the humanity of the Other; whereas Zionists are fanatical extremists who dehumanize their victims. The Spanish basically say: “Okay, we stole Melilla, and did other unpleasant things, but that was long ago, and since we gave back most of what we stole, please work with us and we’ll come to some kind of reasonably generous arrangement. We’ll find a way to make sure that you’ll do better with us here than you would if we left.” The Spanish have facilitated “irregular trade,” i.e. smuggling, which provides a way for Moroccans in the region to make a living. They permit residents of the neighboring Moroccan city of Nador to cross the border at will. They have granted full Spanish citizenship to the ethnically-Moroccan Muslims of Melilla. (Muslims now constitute the majority of Melilla’s population, and Islam is becoming an indigenous religion of Spain due to conversions and intermarriage.) And Spain has allowed almost a million Moroccans to live on the Peninsula legally, alongside an unknown number of illegal ones. Hardworking Moroccans in Spain send back remittances to their families, which keeps Morocco’s economy afloat. The Zionists, for their part, have no interest in being generous or even reasonable. They are going to keep right on stealing and killing and expelling—“if I don’t steal it someone else gonna steal it” goes the Israeli proverb—and they are going to keep treating the locals as fourth-class-citizens at best, animals at worst. I got a taste of the generosity of Melillans yesterday, literally, as I wandered around trying to find my AirBnb. I don’t use a cell phone, and the cafés with wireless were closed for siesta, so my only recourse was to accost real live human beings in half-broken Spanish lapsing into mixtures of French and Moroccan Arabic and ask them for help finding Commandante Royo Street. As it turned out nobody had ever heard of such a street, but several took the time to put up with my linguistic inadequacies, look it up on their cell phones, and point me in this or that direction. After three or four pointers and still no luck, I was getting desperate, when some folks barbecuing shish kebobs on the sidewalk—they appeared to include people of both Spanish and Moroccan ethnicity—insisted that I join the party. Fortified by shish kebobs, orange soda, and conversation with friendly people who put up with my bad Spanish, I hit the streets again and found the place I was looking for. *A staple of Melilla’s convivencia rhetoric is the reference to “four cultures.” The odd thing is that two of those four cultures—the Muslims and the Catholics—together comprise about 98% of the population, while the Jews and Hindus together are only 2%.
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