Israel’s Trojan Horse The “temporary pier” being built on the Mediterranean coast of Gaza is not there to alleviate the famine, but to herd Palestinians onto ships and into permanent exile. Chris Hedges Israel’s Trojan Horse - by Mr. Fish Piers allow things to come in. They allow things to go out. And Israel, which has no intention of halting its murderous siege of Gaza, including its policy of enforced starvation, appears to have found a solution to its problem of where to expel the 2.3 million Palestinians. If the Arab world will not take them, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken proposed during his first round of visits after Oct. 7, the Palestinians will be cast adrift on ships. It worked in Beirut in 1982 when some eight and a half thousand Palestine Liberation Organization members were sent by sea to Tunisia and another two and a half thousand ended up in other Arab states. Israel expects that the same forced deportation by sea will work in Gaza. Israel, for this reason, supports the “temporary pier” the Biden administration is building, to ostensibly deliver food and aid to Gaza – food and aid whose “distribution” will be overseen by the Israeli military. “You need drivers that don’t exist, trucks that don’t exist feeding into a distribution system that doesn’t exist,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior aid official in the Biden administration, and now president of the Refugees International aid advocacy group told The Guardian. This “maritime corridor” is Israel’s Trojan Horse, a subterfuge to expel Palestinians. The small shipments of seaborne aid, like the food packets that have been air dropped, will not alleviate the looming famine. They are not meant to. Five Palestinians were killed and several others injured when a parachute carrying aid failed and crashed onto a crowd of people near Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp. “Dropping aid in this way is flashy propaganda rather than a humanitarian service,” the media office of the local government in Gaza said. “We previously warned it poses a threat to the lives of citizens in the Gaza Strip, and this is what happened today when the parcels fell on the citizens’ heads.” If the U.S. or Israel were serious about alleviating the humanitarian crisis, the thousands of trucks with food and aid currently at the southern border of Gaza would be allowed to enter any of its multiple crossings. They are not. The “temporary pier,” like the air drops, is ghoulish theater, a way to mask Washington’s complicity in the genocide. Israeli media reported the building of the pier was due to pressure by the United Arab Emirates, which threatened Israel with ending a land corridor trade route it administers in collusion with Saudi Arabia and Jordan, to bypass Yemen’s naval blockade. The Jerusalem Post reported it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who proposed the construction of the “temporary pier” to the Biden administration. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has called Palestinians “human animals” and advocated a total siege of Gaza, including cutting off electricity, food, water and fuel, lauded the plan, saying “it is designed to bring aid directly to the residents and thus continue the collapse of Hamas’s rule in Gaza.” “Why would Israel, the engineer of the Gaza famine, endorse the idea of establishing a maritime corridor for aid to address a crisis it initiated and is now worsening?” writes Tamara Nassar in an article titled “What’s the Real Purpose of Biden’s Gaza Port?” in The Electronic Intifada. “This might appear paradoxical if one were to assume that the primary aim of the maritime corridor is to deliver aid.” When Israel offers a gift to the Palestinians you can be sure it is a poison apple. That Israel got the Biden administration to construct the pier is one more example of the inverted relationship between Washington and Jerusalem, where the Israel lobby has bought off elected officials in the two ruling parties. Oxfam in a March 15 report accuses Israel of actively hindering aid operations in Gaza in defiance of the orders by the International Court of Justice. It notes that 1.7 million Palestinians, some 75 percent of the Gaza population, are facing famine and two-thirds of the hospitals and over 80 percent of all health clinics in Gaza are no longer operable. The majority of people, the report reads, “have no access to clean drinking water” and “sanitation services are not functioning.” The report reads: The conditions we have observed in Gaza are beyond catastrophic, and we have not only seen failure by Israeli authorities to meet their responsibility to facilitate and support international aid efforts, but in fact seen active steps being taken to hinder and undermine such aid efforts. Israel’s control of Gaza continues to be characterized by deliberate restrictive actions that have led to a severe and systemic dysfunctionality in the delivery of aid. Humanitarian organizations operational in Gaza are reporting a worsening situation since the International Court of Justice imposed provisional measures in light of the plausible risk of genocide, with intensified Israeli barriers, restrictions and attacks against humanitarian personnel. Israel has maintained a ‘convenient illusion of a response’ in Gaza to serve its claim that it is allowing aid in and conducting the war in line with international laws. Oxfam says Israel employs “a dysfunctional and undersized inspection system that keeps aid snarled up, subjected to onerous, repetitive and unpredictable bureaucratic procedures that are contributing to trucks being stranded in giant queues for 20 days on average.” Israel, Oxfam explains, rejects “items of aid as having ‘dual (military) use,’ banning vital fuel and generators entirely along with other items essential for a meaningful humanitarian response such as protective gear and communications kit.” Rejected aid, “must go through a complex ‘pre-approval’ system or end up being held in limbo at the Al Arish warehouse in Egypt.” Israel has also “cracked down on humanitarian missions, largely sealing off northern Gaza, and restricting international humanitarian workers’ access not only into Gaza, but Israel and the West Bank including East Jerusalem too.” Israel has allowed 15,413 trucks into Gaza during the past 157 days of war. Oxfam estimates that the population of Gaza needs five times that number. Israel allowed 2,874 trucks in February, a 44 percent reduction from the previous month. Before Oct. 7, 500 aid trucks entered Gaza daily. Israeli soldiers have also killed scores of Palestinians attempting to receive aid from trucks in more than two dozen incidents. These attacks include the killing of at least 21 Palestinians, and the wounding of 150, on March 14, when Israeli forces fired on thousands of people in Gaza City. The same area had been targeted by Israeli soldiers hours earlier. “Israel’s assault has caught Gaza’s own aid workers and international agencies’ partners inside a ‘practically uninhabitable’ environment of mass displacement and deprivation, where 75 percent of solid waste is now being dumped in random sites, 97 percent of groundwater made unfit for human use, and the Israeli state using starvation as a weapon of war,” Oxfam says. There is no place in Gaza, Oxfam notes, that is safe “amid the forcible and often multiple displacements of almost the entire population, which makes the principled distribution of aid unviable, including agencies' ability to help repair vital public services at scale.” Oxfam blasts Israel for its “disproportionate” and “indiscriminate” attacks on “civilian and humanitarian assets” as well as “solar, water, power and sanitation plants, UN premises, hospitals, roads, and aid convoys and warehouses, even when these assets are supposedly ‘deconflicted’ after their coordinates have been shared for protection.” The health ministry in Gaza said Monday that at least 31,726 people have been killed since the Israeli assault began five months ago. The death toll includes at least 81 deaths in the previous 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 73,792 people have been wounded in Gaza since Oct. 7. Thousands more are missing, many buried under the rubble. None of these Israeli tactics will be altered with the building of a “temporary pier.” In fact, given the pending ground assault on Rafah, where 1.2 million displaced Palestinians are crowded in tent cities or camped out in the open air, Israel’s tactics will only get worse. Israel, by design, is creating a humanitarian crisis of such catastrophic proportions, with thousands of Palestinians killed by bombs, shells, missiles, bullets, starvation and infectious diseases, that the only option will be death or deportation. The pier is where the last act in this gruesome genocidal campaign will be played out as Palestinians are herded by Israeli soldiers onto ships. How appropriate that the Biden administration, without whom this genocide could not be carried out, will facilitate it. Share https://open.substack.com/pub/chrishedges/p/israels-trojan-horse

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 106: Israel bombs Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, U.S. bombs Yemen Biden insists Netanyahu is open to a two-state solution, despite Netanyahu stating the opposite. Meanwhile, a Palestinian-American teenager was killed by Israelis in the West Bank, and the UN estimates two mothers are killed in Gaza every hour. Mondoweiss Palestine BureauJanuary 20, 2024 A Palestinian child istreated on the floor of a hospital after being injured in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza (APA Images) An injured Palestinian woman looks over a child being treated on the floor of a hospital after they were injured in Israeli air strikes on December 30, 2023 in Dair El-Balah, Gaza. (Photo: APA Images) Casualties: 24,927 killed* and at least 62,388 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 369 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,147. 550 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7, including 194 since the beginning of the ground invasion, and at least 3,221 injured.** *This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health on January 20. Some rights groups put the death toll at more than 32,000 when accounting for those presumed dead. **This figure is released by the Israeli military. Key Developments Israel continues to relentlessly kill Palestinians in Gaza, as more reports emerge of torture and executions of Palestinians by Israeli forces. The United Nations says that two mothers are killed every hour on average in Gaza, as it denounces the disproportionate impact of the violence on women. An Israeli airstrike in the Syrian capital kills at least four Iranian military advisers. U.S. forces meanwhile launch the sixth wave of airstrikes on Yemen in a self-avowedly unsuccessful bid to deter Houthi rebels from disrupting commercial shipping in the Red Sea in support of Palestine. Israelis shoot and kill a Palestinian-American teenager in the head in the occupied West Bank. An Israeli airstrike kills two people in southern Lebanon. U.S. President Joe Biden has his first call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in nearly a month, and tells journalists that Netanyahu is in favor of a two-state solution, despite all evidence to the contrary. Israel’s emergency government meanwhile teeters on the brink of collapse amid internal discord and unilateral moves by Netanyahu threatening a hostage deal. The European Union’s chief diplomat says Israel bears responsibility for the existence of Hamas, and argues that a diplomatic solution may need to be imposed on Israel “from the outside.” The Guardian: Legal advisers for U.K.’s Foreign Office cannot conclude that Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is compliant with international law. Women and children face ‘hell’ in Gaza, as survivors recount torture, humiliation, and executions at hands of Israeli soldiers Israeli forces killed at least 165 Palestinians and wounded 280 more in the past 24 hours in Gaza, the Ministry of Health in the small bombarded enclave reported on Saturday, bringing the official death toll since October 7 in Gaza to 24,927, with at least 62,388 more wounded. Advertisement Help Mondoweiss reach 100,000 subscribers on YouTube! This number does not include people who are missing and believed to be trapped under rubble, unidentified bodies, people who were buried by their families without going to a hospital, nor people who have died due to illness, cold, or hunger as a result of Israel’s merciless blockade of Gaza. The real death toll is believed by some groups to surpass 32,000. Deadly Israeli strikes have pummelled the areas of Khan Younis, al-Qarara, Bani Suheila, al-Zana, Abasan, Batn Al-Sameen, Nuseirat refugee camp, al-Shati refugee camp, and Jabalia since Friday, WAFA news agency reported. After eight days of complete blackout, Paltel meanwhile reported a partial return of telecom services in Gaza. Palestinian armed factions meanwhile said they were confronting ground Israeli forces in various neighborhoods of Gaza City, as well as in al-Bureij, al-Maghazi, Jabalia, and Khan Younis. Israel’s relentless war on Gaza is killing two mothers every hour, U.N. Women estimated in a new report looking into the gendered impact of the catastrophic situation in the Palestinian enclave since October 7. “We have seen evidence once more that women and children are the first victims of conflict and that our duty to seek peace is a duty to them. Without change, these last 100 days will be mere prelude to the next 100,” UN Women executive director Sima Bahous said on Friday. “These are people, not numbers, and we are failing them. That failure, and the generational trauma inflicted on the Palestinian people over these 100 days and counting, will haunt us all for generations to come.” UNICEF, which has estimated that some 20,000 babies have been born in Gaza since October 7, said these Palestinian children were being “born into hell.” “Becoming a mother should be a time for celebration. In Gaza, it’s another child delivered into hell,” UNICEF communication specialist Tess Ingram said on Friday. “Humanity cannot allow this warped version of normal to persist any longer. Mothers and newborns need a humanitarian ceasefire.” Meanwhile, more accounts have emerged of Israeli soldiers torturing and executing Palestinians in Gaza, with eyewitnesses telling Al Jazeera that Israeli forces publicly hanged some Palestinians in Beit Lahia’s Indonesian Hospital, and forced survivors to sleep in the same room as dead bodies. Palestinian men who were detained incommunicado by Israel for up to 55 days meanwhile spoke of being beaten, having dogs urinate on them, and being subjected to psychological terror. “They threatened to shoot us. After two hours of being half-naked in such conditions, they moved us a few meters and told us to get ready for our execution,” Muhammad Abu Samra, one former prisoner, told Al Jazeera. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) meanwhile denounced in its latest update the “dramatic increase” in Israel’s denials of access to humanitarian aid deliveries. The organization said that 69 percent of aid deliveries to northern Gaza were rejected by the Israeli military in the first two weeks of January, compared to a 14 percent denial rate between October and December. The rejection rate rose 95 percent for the distribution of fuel and medicine to water reservoirs, water wells, and health facilities, leading to “increased health and environmental hazards while debilitating the functionality of the six partially functioning hospitals” in northern Gaza. Palestinian-American teenager shot in the head and killed in the West Bank A Palestinian-American teenager was shot in the head and killed by Israelis on Friday near the central occupied West Bank village of Mazraa al-Sharqiya. WAFA news agency identified him as 17-year-old Palestinian-American Tawfiq Hafiz Ajjaq, who had recently moved back to Palestine. Israeli newspaper Haaretz said Ajjaq was killed by an Israeli settler and an off-duty police officer, who claimed the boy had been throwing stones. The U.S. State Department told journalists it was in contact with Israeli authorities over the case and “working to understand the circumstances of the incident.” Washington has historically done little to ensure justice when Israelis kill Palestinians with U.S. citizenship, such as Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and 80-year-old Omar Assad. Israeli forces detained at least 22 Palestinians across the West Bank overnight, Al Jazeera reported, including a former prisoner in the Jenin area. WAFA news agency reported a number of raids across the occupied West Bank, including in Nablus, Kafr Nim’a, Tuqu’, and Hebron. Confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinian residents were meanwhile reported in Nablus, Tubas, Balata refugee camp, and Jenin. Elsewhere, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians in the flashpoint area of Masafer Yatta and near Rammon. In occupied East Jerusalem Israeli police once again restricted worshippers’ access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers, and Israeli authorities forced a Palestinian resident of Silwan to demolish his own home for not having a near-impossible to obtain a construction permit. The Israeli political circus continues Barely a day after Benjamin Netanyahu publicly reiterated that there would be no Palestinian state under his watch, the Israeli premier had a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden for the first time in nearly a month. Biden later told journalists that Netanyahu had told him he was open to a two-state solution, sparking bafflement from reporters. “There are a number of types of two-state solutions,” Biden told the journalists. “There’s a number of countries that are members of the UN that don’t have their own militaries…. And so I think there’s ways in which this could work.” “Bibi just said he’s opposed to any two-state solution,” CBS journalist Weijia Jiang told Biden, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “No, he didn’t say that,” Biden responded. While the Israeli prime minister appears to be telling his staunch American ally one thing and his Israeli audience another, Israeli president Isaac Herzog told the audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday that no Israeli “in his right mind is willing now to think about what will be the solution of the peace agreement.” Tensions meanwhile are continuing to rise within Netanyahu’s wartime coalition government, with some observers saying it is “close to collapse.” Among the latest indications of a fracture between Netanyahu and his fellow war cabinet members, former army chiefs of staff Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli prime minister unilaterally changed Israel’s conditions for a hostage release deal to a tougher series of demands, Israeli media reported. While Gantz and Eisenkot have publicly stated that a deal is the only way to obtain the safe return of some 132 Israelis still held in Gaza, Netanyahu and his far-right allies are obstinately arguing that the use of force is the only way forward, despite its failure so far to lead to the release of hostages alive. The families of Israeli hostages camped outside of Netanyahu’s home in Cesarea on Friday to call for him to agree to a deal that could bring their loved ones home. Tensions ratchet up across the Middle East Tensions in the region are at a tipping point, as several strikes by Israel and its allies threaten to escalate violence irrevocably. Israeli forces launched an airstrike in the Syrian capital Damascus on Friday, killing five people, including at least four military advisers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Iranian military organization confirmed, calling it a “terrorist attack.” Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike on a car killed two people in southern Lebanon. Lebanese media could not immediately confirm whether the two were, as Israel claims, members of Hamas. On the Yemeni front, U.S. forces struck Ansar Allah targets for the sixth time this month, in a bid to halt the Yemeni rebel group, also known as the Houthis, from thwarting the passage of commercial ships in the Red Sea in support of Palestine. Biden has himself acknowledged that American and British airstrikes were unlikely to deter Ansar Allah, but has nonetheless vowed to continue on. In Europe, the E.U.’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell accused Israel on Friday of bearing responsibility for the creation and funding of the Hamas movement – claims that have been extensively acknowledged by Israeli officials themselves. “Hamas was financed by the Israeli government in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority,” Borrell told an audience at the University of Valladolid in Spain, before adding that “The only solution is to create two states that share the land for which they have been dying for 100 years,” even if this two-state solution needs to be “imposed from the outside.” BEFORE YOU GO – 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/2024/01/operation-al-aqsa-flood-day-106-israel-bombs-gaza-lebanon-and-syria-u-s-bombs-yemen/

The Lost Saber Mine: In the fall of 1876, a successful business man from Georgia named John Saber, arrived in Prescott Arizona to try his luck in gold mining. John Saber purchased numerous mining claims along Lynx Creek but he didn't care much for how crowded the place was, and he wanted to find a place that might produce better gold than Lynx Creek. By the Spring of 1877, Saber set off alone from Prescott into the dangerous Bradshaw Mountains with only his horse and a pack mule with few supplies and a bulk of mining equipment. Within a month he returned in town with two saddle bag's full of beautiful quartz laced with gold. He purchased two more pack animals and loaded them with as much supplies as he could and even more mining equipment. A Captain stationed at Ft Whipple asked to escort the prospector with his detachment to as far as Rose Peak (Now Antelope Peak) as the Apache were recently active in the mountains nearby. Saber agreed and stated that his recent discovery was just a days ride from Rose Peak. Once at the peak and having camped for two days, the military escort continued their patrol and Saber returned to his mine. This was the last time the citizens of Prescott ever seen John Saber alive. During the late summer, a Chinese laborer collecting firewood from one of the many mining camps came upon a dead man sitting upright against a Ponderosa Pine, his horse and a pack animal hobbled nearby and heavily dehydrated. When others arrived they noticed that this was the man's camp and that there was no sign of foul play. While going through the dead man's clothes, they found documents, a book and a pocket watch identifying the man as John Saber. Upon closer inspection they could see the cause of death, Saber was bitten by a Rattlesnake and had a slow, agonizing death. In one of Saber's pack's was 100lbs of crushed rich gold ore which was ready for smelting. Obviously he was making his way into town to have his discovery properly assayed and possibly even file a legitimate claim, but sadly never made it. No attempt was made to find his mine during that time as the Bradshaw's were so active with the Apache raiding the mining camps and local ranches. The Saber mine has never been found and the only real clue we have is that it is a day's ride from Rose Peak (Now Antelope Peak). If this mine was found, I believe it would be quite the discovery! If while on your adventures this week, you find yourself near the Bradshaw Mountains and happen to be near Antelope Peak, maybe stop and take a look around. You never know what you might find!!!!! (Please follow and respect State, Federal laws and Private Property, A lot of this area is Private land and Federal Mining claims so if your unsure it never hurts to ask permission) I hope everyone has a fun and exciting week! Stay Safe, Stay Alive, Keep Treasure Hunting!!!!!!

Good Morning SoMee, The very first time we visited the #Badlands in #SouthDakota we #camped at the #freecampsite in the #BuffaloNationalGrasslands just outside of the #NationalPark. On our way in we had to stop for a #buffalo. It was both cool and a little stressful as well, because our dogs wouldn't stop barking. The last thing we wanted to do was to upset him, lol. #SoMee #someeofficial #someeoriginals #originalcontent #gif #nature #wildlife #travel #adventure

Did you know there are more than one #GardenoftheGods in America? Most know about the one in #ColoradoSpringsColorado, but few know that there's one in Southeastern #Illinois within the #ShawneeNationalForest as well. Both are just as majestic, but the one in Illinois is significantly smaller. I camped out for a couple days in the latter GoG and got some beautiful shots. Here's the #sunset I witnessed my first night there. #somee #someeoriginals #originalcontent #myphoto #hiking #camping #scenery #travel #adventure

Last year Tom(pictured) and I went on a #roadtrip that brought us through #NorthDakota where we found this gem of a #campsite. We camped at the #BurningCoalVein #MaahDaahHey #Trailhead where the #views were amazing. Tom is like my adopted dad who is 81 years old. He's had a bad leg all his life and his age makes walking more difficult, but he insisted on hiking around to get the most of the views. I found a good stick and whittled a point at one end and a handle on the other, so he had something to help him along. I look forward to finding my way back there again and I have many more photographs to share with you in the future. #somee #someeoriginals #originalcontent #myphoto #photography #travel #adventure #hiking