Can You Feel The Earth Shaking?
Normals Are Stepping Up All Over the World. Everything is Shifting. The Evidence follows:

elizabeth nickson

Did you hear the roar on the streets when Milei won Argentina? It built and built, and then everyone was out on the streets shouting, from windows, inside shops, houses. It is the future, all over the world. The Netherlands on Friday. Same same. Universal rejoicing.

Absurdistan does a solid line in doom, but our firmly held first principle is that every single one of us should be two or three times as rich, with massively increased scope and ability to do the things we want to do. Defeating the criminal cartel that runs Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Government, Big Tech and Big Charity will light up the galaxy if not the universe. And….this. Especially this:


Unlike almost everyone in the media, Absurdistan knows regulation is the principal reason we are hornswoggled serfs. Even Trump’s team was surprised at the economic boom that came from his mild de-regulation; they thought tax relief was the key. It was important, none of us should be paying more than 25% in taxes, if that, but the regulation! You have no earthly idea how fiendish it has become until you start a business or require permission to create anything in the material world. Few journalists ever do that, the most they do is join a bank in “communications”, design an app or website, do PR, or ‘consult’. They are virtually, to a man or woman, children in the real world. So no one reports on the most brutal crippler of every man, woman and child on earth. Equally, virtually no writer I read has any grasp on the ingenuity, the creativity, the strength of the ordinary man. They all seem to think we need guidance from them, which is laughable. They have screwed up everything so utterly, we teeter daily on the edge of fiscal catastrophe

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Bloomberg reports on Milei victory
When Vivek Ramaswamy proposed instantly firing 50% of federal bureaucrats on Day One, I stood on my office chair and cheered.

When Javier Milei tore strips of paper representing government ministries off the whiteboard, I had to go out and run around the house a few times.


sheer heaven
Africa is not limited by anything but confiscatory corrupt government, as asserted by Magatte Wade in her new book. Wade should be running things in Africa, which is polluted by commies, plutocrats, crooked multinationals, ravening bureaucrats, corrupt politicians and the brutalist green movement. The Chinese would stun the world if they could get rid of the vicious predatory communist regime that enslaves every man, woman and child. And not in the sense that they are “taking over”.


The mop-up will take decades. But unpicking the bad regs and shooing the bad legislators off to permanent exile, prosecuting the army of government thieves, and creating a multi-polar world, will be more absorbing than our endless self-cherishing, self-indulgence. Have we not all shopped enough? We have powerful enemies, but they are fully aware of how destructive they have been, their guilt written on their exhausted pouchy faces.

Trump is a symptom, not a cause

People fighting the Borg wish for leaders but this is not a movement that requires leadership by anyone but each and every one of us. Trump is a symptom, not a cause. This is multi-headed, like Medusa, representing tens, hundreds of millions of individuals saying NO. Real politicians like Mike Johnson, Geert Wilders, Pierre Poilievre, Javier Milei, and Danielle Smith are listening to us and stepping up.

I annoy even myself when I repeat this, but I come from a family that has been in ‘the New World’ since 1630: Puritans, Revolutionaries, infrastructure builders, town fathers and mothers. I own ten thousand pages of their records and can tell you at concrete level assurance, that one of cities they founded, Vancouver, would not be riven by Asian criminal cartels washing most of the drug money in North America through our real estate and casinos, if my great aunt and uncle were alive. They, that generation and those before, didn’t run their cities via government, they ran it through civil society, their churches and charities and cultural clubs and they told government what to do. What they decided upon, collectively, became law. Law wasn’t made by witless, inexperienced, childless men and women who move from college straight to government, it was made by those who engaged with life fully. On their block, in their neighborhood, in their city. They knew where every sparrow fell. And, by the way, my family married into Indian bands and were officers on the Underground Railroad. Everything academia and publishing tells you about the founding is arrant propaganda meant to strip you of self-respect and power.


Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, threw away engagement and our current enslavement, our stasis, our stuck-ness, is the result. Not really our fault. We were brainwashed and mind controlled by military level psy-ops, run out of the CIA, the Tavistock Clinic and the cursed Club of Rome. Reclaiming that power is our responsibility going forward. It is the future. No one gets to go back to sleep. I wrote about our collective brainwashing extensively in August. Here is one piece:

They Break Every Family, Every Town, Every Country

They Break Every Family, Every Town, Every Country
This is the second in an August series about the Head of the Snake, an examination of the cabal that is behind the Great Reset, the Covid and Global Warming hoaxes, and every profit-bonanza war of the last thirty, if not 500 years, but especially Ukraine. They call themselves by a proliferation of names: the Olympians, the Elect, Bilderbergers, the 300, demi-gods, the Black Nobility, other silly secret names that must not be spoken. They are secret because their intent is evil. They practice the occult – foolish and irresponsible – they are “Masons” of the crazy branch, a cult that operates entirely in the dark and entirely for themselves. They are as power-hungry as Hillary Clinton and far more corrupt than she or Biden or his dreadful son. They have been around for a thousand years, laughably tracing their bloodlines back to Sumer and the Pharaohs and they think that is important. In fact, who they are is Hunter Biden, he is their id, the visual manifestation of their disgusting de…

Read full story

Herewith a roundup of our recent victories in no particular order of importance. Many (not all) are courtesy of kevinfernandes82 on Instagram, who does yeoman work aggregating daily the many wins by populists across the world; I heartily recommend a follow to fight off despair.

I am only describing the wins of the past ten days, and I edited out dozens. Each win represents hundreds to thousands to millions of people who stood up and took back their power.

Politics


Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom won a groundbreaking victory this week.

Libertarian Javier Milei won in Argentina, promising to strip government of many ministries.

All of Spain on the streets calling for end to Socialism. Retired Generals call for coup to get rid of socialist Prime Minister


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Danielle Smith declares that the Trudeau Liberals are a lawless government and it’s time to assert the constitution

Bloc Quebecois calls for abolition of Governor General’s office as expenses soar 11%. This office is King Charles’s grift and a mechanism of British Round Table control. Crown land is our land, not his.

The restaurant that kicked out GOP Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders because she worked for Trump closes its doors.

CEO of DeSantis super PAC resigns.

The Conservative Party of Canada has not polled this high since the 1950’s. It outpolls the Liberals and NDP among under 30’s.

Rudy Giuliani states that Zelensky has photographs of Hunter Biden that could bring down the Democratic Party and has been using them to blackmail Biden.

A Republican has just beat a Democrat in the Mayoral race in Charleston, South Carolina for the first time since 1877.

Farmers in France spray government buildings with cow manure to protest increases in charges and taxes.

Former Black Voices for Trump wins against left-wing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, as a Fulton County judge rejects a bid to lock him up over his social media posts

4th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down part of Maryland’s laws regulating handguns.

Putin blames the U.N.: “Due to the sabotage of U.N. decisions which clearly provide for the creation and peaceful coexistence of two independent and sovereign states, more than one generation of Palestinians has been brought up in an atmosphere of injustice.”

Italian court convicts 207 people in Mafia maxi-trial.

U.S. Speaker Mike Johnson releases 40,000 hours of security footage of January 6th.

Trump has considerably more support among young voters than Joe Biden according to a new NBC poll.

Ex-Massachusetts senator facing 28 federal charges in connection with COVID fraud investigation.

Asian-American residents of Brighton Park Chicago are furious about illegal migrants coming to their neighbourhood. 87% voted for Biden.

One hundred police called out after protest surrounds Trudeau at restaurant. “You have blood on your hands”, call protestors referring to the vaccine mandates.

German constitutional court strikes down plan of left-green-liberal government: rules they may not use 60B euros intended for Covid, for climate and energy measures.

The Crown dropped charges against a pizza parlour owner for not closing down his restaurant during covid. The hearing lasted ten minutes and the verdict greeted with cheers.

The Irish riot after an Algerian migrant injures three children. WEFer immigration policy is on the chopping block in every country.

The Grotesque Sexualization of the Culture is Winding Down


Biden Pentagon official overseeing the department managing elementary schools has been arrested in a human trafficking sting in Georgia.

Prime Minister-Elect Javier Miles and Sound of Freedom Producer Eduardo Verastegui just signed and agreement to end all human trafficking operations in Argentina.

Andrew Cuomo sued for sexual harassment by former executive assistant.

GOP donor Harlan Crow’s brother is accused of financing a 100-person sex trafficking ring.

Bad Boy Label President sued for sexual assault, negligence.

TikTok, X and Meta CEOs to face Congressional Hearing Over Child Sexual Exploitation.

Cuba Gooding Jr hit with two civil suits related to NYC sexual assaults

American Idol coach, and Interscope Records founder, Jimmy Iovine sued over sexual misconduct and abuse.

NYC Mayor Eric Adams accused of sexual assault in 1993 in new legal filing

Jeremy Fox sued for sexual assault in NYC restaurant.

Axl Rose sued over sexual assault by former Penthouse model.

Julia Ormond sues Harvey Weinstein, CAA and Disney for sexual battery and enabling sexual assault.

Model claims photographer Terry Richardson raped her, sold it as art.

Jeffrey Epstein’s multimillionaire friend accused of sexually harassing stepdaughter.

The ex-mayor of College Park, Maryland has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material. Democrat, White House guest pled guilty to 100 counts.

Authorities allege Binance allowed bad actors to freely transact on the platform, enabling everything from child sex abuse to terrorist financing. Binance CEO steps down, Binance pays $4.3B in fines.

A federal judge in California certified a class action lawsuit against Pornhub/MindGeek/Aylo on behalf of tens of thousands of child victims abused for profit.

“I’m at a loss”. Trudeau governments experts upset by foot-dragging over online harms law. Trudeau is widely believed to participate in violent sexual activities.

P Diddy settles with Cassie over abuse and trafficking, but not before his reputation is destroyed. Two more women charge choking and rape.

Saskatchewan Party MLA charged with soliciting sexual services kicked out of government caucus.

Stacey Abram’s brother-in-law arrested for attacking 16-year-old, human trafficking in Tampa.

Peter Nygard convicted on four counts of sexual assault.

World Health Organization paid sexual abuse victims in the Congo $250US each.

John Podesta’s friend, who debunked Pizzagate, arrested for raping toddlers.

Media/culture


CBC admits to making multiple censorship appeals to social media platforms, so many that they say they ‘couldn’t really analyze each one correctly’.

Big Box stores ditching self-checkout citing theft and customer preference.

Conservatives reject Canada-Ukraine trade bill.

The International Cricket Council bans transgender women from women’s cricket.

Bell Media tells CRTC its priorities are backwards during Online Streaming Act hearing.

Javier Milei announces the closure of the Ministry of Women, Gender and Equality in 21 days.

The Director of the University of Alberta’s sexual violence center has been removed from her position after she endorsed an open letter that denied allegations of rape and sexual violence by Hamas terrorists during the October massacre.

Elon Musk is donating all X Corp revenue from advertising and subscriptions associated with the war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza.

Morning Joe admits Ukraine has lost the war against Russia.

Fauci admits Covid vaccine causes myocarditis in young men.

China welcomes Arab and Muslim foreign ministers for talks on ending war in Gaza.

X surpasses Instagram and Facebook by a significant margin in driving traffic through Google.

Elon Musk and X file lawsuit against Media Matters. Penalties both civil and criminal.

Ken Paxton of Texas opens investigation into Media Matters for fraud.

Truth Social filed defamation lawsuit against twenty media companies.

Canadians have stopped caring about climate change.

Texas Attorney General Paxton has sued Pfizer.

Marjorie Taylor Greene questions whether Nancy Pelosi orchestrated January 6th.

Trump releases doctor letter touting health and weight loss on Biden’s birthday.

The Iowa Board of Regents has voted to abolish DEI in all State Universities.

Rumble under ‘major DDoS attack after CEO pledged to join Elon Musk to fight woke censorship.

An official UK inquiry panel reports that Boris Johnson was bamboozled by Covid data.

Sam Altman of OpenAI fired. Reinstated and two women board members let go.

Sam Bankman Fried convicted. Faces decades in prison.

Italy bans production and sale of lab grown meat.

Trans Activist company behind Miss Universe has filed for bankruptcy.

A female boxer in Canada withdrew from a championship match after learning she was set to fight a trans-identified male.

Financial

As I reported here last week, Net-Zero and ESG are on their deathbed in every country but the most insane.

CNBC fires staff dedicated to covering climate change.

19 Republican Attorneys General are going after the big banks for closing accounts and discriminating against customers over political/religious beliefs

Trudeau’s billion-dollar Green Slush Fund’s head resigns, after it is discovered she funnelled $200K to her own company.

Hong Kong bankers have lots of free time and anxiety as global dealmaking sinks.

Bank of Canada’s Macklem says interest rates may be high enough to tame inflation.

Bank of Canada reports that Canadians don’t need digital currency and don’t want it.

SEC Commissioner says “there’s no reason for us to stand in the way of a Spot Bitcoin ETF.

Russia, the most sanctioned country in the world will end the year with a $75 Billion profit. The US, the most indebted country in the world, will end 2023 with a lost of $@ Trillion.

Luxury houses tied to China’s Evergrande chairman seized by creditor. Chairman placed under police surveillance.

Argentine stock market up 20% after Milei’s election

South Africa to chair BRICS extraordinary joint meeting on the situation in Gaza.

Mortgage rates decline for the first time in two years.

Inflation declines in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. to lowest in two years.

Dutch Central Bank has prepared for a new Gold Standard.

Republicans building case against Antony Fauci. New emails show Fauci adviser suggesting he destroyed records.

Jim Jordan issues subpoena to Bank of America for sharing customer’s private financial information with the FBI.

Australian clamps down on migrants with criminal convictions.

BLM activist Jayden X found guilty on all seven counts for his actions on January 6th.

Decline in local U.S. news outlets is accelerating.

Canada Media Fund admits subsidizing newspapers and news channels didn’t stop decline.

Ghost busses uncovered filled with FBI agents dressed as Trump supporters on January 6th.

Pfizer stock hits three year low, down 50% from 2021.

Disney loses $40B from DeSantis pulling special treatment.

Voter Fraud


A federal judge in Georgia has ordered a trial for the case against Dominion machines.

Trump declares he will bring everything to light, including the 2020 election fraud, concluding we need same day voting and paper ballots.

Kim Phuong Taylor found guilty of 51 counts related to voter fraud in the election of her husband, Jeremy Taylor

Fulton County, Georgia acknowledges that 3,600 ballots from the 2020 election audit were duplicated. Discrepancy turned over the the GA Attorney General for investigation.

Obama-appointed federal judge just ruled against voting machines in Georgia.

Maricopa County Elections Department has admitted they improperly certified the voting machines that failed on Election Day. Sixty percent of the machines failed.

Trump: “We have so much evidence of election fraud, and I look forward to introducing it in my trials.”

Colorado judge keeps Trump on 2024 primary ballot as latest 14th Amendment case falters.

South Carolina implements Voter ID.

Meta allows ads saying 2020 election was rigged on Facebook and Instagram.

Stacey Abrams’ voting organization, overseen by Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock (who stole his seat), is facing serious allegations of financial fraud.

Arizona Governor Katies Hobbs’ Election Task Force concluded that then-Secretary of State Hobbs engaged in election interference in 2022 by preventing Arizonans from voting while running her own election for governor.

Wisconsin legislature has passed two constitutional amendment proposals that seek to prohibit noncitizen voting and the use of private money (ZuckBucks) to conduct elections.

ZuckerBucks banned in 32 states.



All this in fewer than ten days. The future should be blinding you right about now.

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Much of the mainstream news/propaganda is designed to oppress, depress and disempower you. Even independent journalism falls into despair all too often. I fight that with every fibre of my ability. I disagree. I do not think we are lost. I don’t think there is a new dark age ahead. I think quite the opposite.

Again, I am grateful for all the subscriptions, paid and otherwise last week. “Put a chick in it” was enormously popular. When you like, subscribe and pay, I know where to go next with my writing. Thank you especially for the founding memberships and the people who send money via PayPal, and $20 bills from Thailand - you make a huge difference. Again, I keep my prices low so if you are not rich, you can afford to support me and others. If you are rich, consider a founding membership…cheaper in the long run!

https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/can-you-feel-the-earth-shaking?utm_medium=ios

Israeli child “burned completely” by Israeli tank fire at kibbutz
Ali Abunimah and David Sheen The Electronic Intifada 25 November 2023

Photo portrait of a girl with curly hair
Israeli girl Liel Hatsroni, 12, was killed after Israeli forces used a tank to shell a house in Kibbutz Be’eri on 7 October, according to an Israeli who survived the violence. (via Twitter)
An Israeli child completely incinerated at Kibbutz Be’eri was killed by two tank shells shot by Israeli forces at the end of an hours-long gun battle, a survivor of the same carnage told the Israeli state broadcaster Kan earlier this month.

Yasmin Porat, taken captive with at least a dozen other Israeli civilians on 7 October, told Kan radio that a fellow captive, 12-year-old Liel Hatsroni, survived to the end of the battle and only died when Israeli forces fired two tank shells at the house where they were held hostage by Hamas fighters.

Hatsroni’s obliteration by Israeli tank fire emerged this month after her family decided to mourn her with a public funeral, even though the government had not officially pronounced her dead.

Although Hatsroni’s 69-year-old grandfather Aviyah and twin brother Yanai were buried two weeks after their deaths on 7 October, her 73-year-old aunt and guardian Ayala was only buried on 15 November, the day after Israel officially declared her dead.

On that day the Hatsroni family also held funeral rites for Liel, though the state still listed her as missing because “to this day they have not found any of her remains,” Yasmin Porat told Kan on 15 November.

You can listen to Porat speak in that interview in this video, with English subtitles:



Three days later, the Hatsroni family was informed that archaeologists working with the Kahanist-run Israel Antiquities Authority had finally identified Liel’s remains at the house, Ynet, an Israeli news site, reported.
Although at least 50 people died in that particular bloodbath – and at least 10 of them were Israeli civilians – Porat herself left the battle intact, when one Hamas commander, out of a force that numbered about 40 fighters, surrendered.

Israeli forces called to the scene instructed the Hamas commander to come out with Porat, effectively turning her into a human shield.

“Two big booms”

In her 15 November interview on Kan’s Kalman Liberman program, Porat recounts how, of the dozen or so Israelis she was held captive with on 7 October, only one other person – Be’eri resident Hadas Dagan – survived the ordeal.

The two tank shells fired into the house at the very end of the battle killed both women’s partners, the young Liel Hatsroni and everyone else in the house who was still left alive up to then, she said.

At around 7:30 pm, after some four hours of crossfire consisting of “hundreds of thousands of bullets,” Porat peered from behind Israeli lines and observed an Israeli tank firing two shells into the small kibbutz house.

“I thought to myself, why are they shooting tank shells into the house,” Porat told Kan. “And I asked one of the people who was with me, why are they shooting? So they explained to me that it was to break the walls, in order to help purify the house.”

At the time, the captive Hadas Dagan was caught for hours in the crossfire between the two sides, lying face down on the grassy lawn. When the Israeli tank shells hit, Dagan felt their impact throughout her whole body, she told Porat after finally emerging from the combat zone in tatters.

“Yasmin, when the two big booms hit, I felt like I flew in the air,” Porat recalls a disheveled Dagan telling her minutes after the battle ended. Dagan was still covered in her husband’s blood, her hair standing on end, full of dust and styrofoam. “It took me two or three minutes to open my eyes, I didn’t feel my body. I was completely paralyzed,” Dagan told her, Porat says.

Upon regaining consciousness, Dagan realized that the captives who had been lying on either side of her – her husband Adi Dagan and Porat’s partner, Tal Katz – had just died from tank shell shrapnel. “When I opened my eyes, I saw that my Adi is dying,” Porat recalls Dagan saying. “Your Tal also stopped moving at that point.”

Though neither Porat nor Dagan witnessed the moment that fellow hostage Liel Hatsroni was incinerated by Israeli tank shells, they both immediately understood that she had died in the explosions, because after screaming for hours on end, since the beginning of the battle, she suddenly went silent.

“I remember, when I was there for the first hour, she did not stop screaming,” Porat told Kan, and noted that her recollections of Hatsroni dovetailed with what Hadas Dagan told her.

“The girl [Liel Hatsroni] did not stop screaming all those hours. She didn’t stop screaming,” Porat recalls Dagan telling her. “Yasmin, when those two shells hit, she stopped screaming. There was silence then.”

“So what do you glean from that? That after that very massive incident, the shooting, which concluded with two shells, that is pretty much when everyone died,” Porat told Kan.

Six weeks after the ordeal of 7 October, Porat concludes that Liel Hatsroni’s remains had yet to be recovered because Israeli tank shelling totally incinerated her and most of the house, finishing off many Hamas fighters and any other surviving captives.

“Part of the house is torched. The house of Hadas and Adi [Dagan] no longer exists. I don’t know how that happened,” Porat said. “If you ask me, I estimate, based on what happened in other houses, she [Liel Hatsroni] apparently burned completely.”


That Israel confirmed the death of Liel’s aunt Ayala only 38 days after 7 October suggests that she, too, was likely burned beyond recognition by Israeli tank shells.
A day after Porat’s revelation on live radio that Liel Hatsroni had been torched to death by tank fire, an Israeli official confirmed that she was not nearly the only person incinerated by Israel on 7 October and in the days that immediately followed.

Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev inadvertently admitted in a 16 November MSNBC interview that some 200 bodies Israel had claimed for weeks were those of Israelis burned to death by Palestinians were now known to be the bodies of Palestinian fighters burned to death by Israel.

“We originally said, in the atrocious Hamas attack upon our people on October 7th, we had the number at 1,400 casualties and now we’ve revised that down to 1,200 because we understood that we’d overestimated, we made a mistake. There were actually bodies that were so badly burnt we thought they were ours, in the end apparently they were Hamas terrorists,” Regev told MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan.

Meanwhile, Hatsroni’s death is being used by Israeli politicians to incite and justify Israel’s vengeful slaughter of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.


Cracks in official narrative

After burning the bodies of some 200 Palestinian fighters, 12-year-old Israeli Liel Hatsroni, and an unknown number of other Israeli civilians, then lying to the world about who burned them and using their deaths and suffering as a pretext to destroy Gaza and annihilate more than 14,000 Palestinians there so far, Israel is finally starting to come clean about its actual contribution to the death toll on that horrific day.

Last week, Israeli daily Haaretz reported that a police investigation into the events of 7 October “indicates that an IDF [Israeli military] combat helicopter that arrived to the scene and fired at terrorists there apparently also hit some festival participants” at the Supernova rave held near the Gaza boundary that day.

Another police source criticized Haaretz and appeared to row back the statement the following day, but did not deny that Israel had killed some Israelis.

The first cracks in the official Israeli narrative about 7 October came from testimony by Yasmin Porat, a 44-year-old mother of three who fled the Supernova rave with her partner Tal Katz and found temporary shelter at Kibbutz Be’eri with local residents Adi and Hadas Dagan – until mid-afternoon. At that point, Hamas fighters captured all four and took them next door, pooling them with another group of eight or more kibbutz residents.


In her initial interview with Kan on 15 October, first reported in English by The Electronic Intifada the following day, Porat revealed that at least some of the dozen-plus Israelis held hostage with her at Be’eri died as a result of Israeli gunfire.
Asked by Kan radio host Aryeh Golan if some of the Israeli casualties of that battle had died by friendly fire, Porat answered “undoubtedly.”

Porat also told Kan and other Israeli media outlets that she and the other Israelis were not mistreated while held by Hamas fighters on 7 October. “They did not abuse us. They treated us very humanely,” Porat told Kan. “They give us something to drink here and there. When they see we are nervous they calm us down. It was very frightening but no one treated us violently.”

The goal of her Hamas captors was to trade captives for Palestinian prisoners incarcerated by Israel, Porat insists.

The 40 or so Hamas fighters who held the Israelis captive for six hours intended to take Porat and the other Israelis back to Gaza – and indeed, they could easily have done so, she said.

The fighters mistakenly assumed, however, that Israeli forces caught by surprise at dawn would have already regrouped by midday and encircled their position by the afternoon. “They could have left with us back and forth 10 times,” said Porat.

There is an increasing body of evidence that either through recklessness or by design, Israeli forces were responsible for killing a not insignificant number of Israelis on and after 7 October.

Yasmin Porat has, by now, been interviewed by just about every Israeli mainstream media outlet, but it still seems as if Israel isn’t listening to her.

Porat and Hadas Dagan, the only survivors from their group of captives, affirm that two Israeli tank shells set the house they were held in on fire and killed at least three of the people in their group: both of their partners and 12-year-old Liel Hatsroni.

In announcing Hatsroni’s death last week , Ynet nevertheless concluded that Hamas fighters “murdered everyone. Afterwards, they torched the house.”

Ali Abunimah is executive director of The Electronic Intifada.

David Sheen is the author of Kahanism and American Politics: The Democratic Party’s Decades-Long Courtship of Racist Fanatics.

Transcript of Yasmin Porat interview

Source: Kan Radio

Kalman Liberman Program

Date: 15 November 2023, 9:18 AM

Yasmin Porat: We come out and suddenly there was a very tense ceasefire. All of the weapons were pointed at us. All the Hamas were pointing at me and him. He begins disrobing while walking, he removes underwear, socks and undershirt, leaving him naked as the day he was born. That’s how we start walking in front of everyone, with him naked and me in front of him as a human shield. At that time, when we pass the living room and the porch with the dining area, where we were previously, then I go out to the yard. And there I recognize my [partner] Tal, Hadas, Adi Dagan and another Tal, the son of one couple, and another elderly couple, lying on the ground, the lawn, you can’t imagine what it looked like. Just spread out there. And full of shrapnel. Endless shooting and they are lying on the lawn, like corpses, but they were all still alive, you can see it. I managed while leaving to ask my Tal, “Tal are you okay?” and he lifted his head, and he was very frightened, because they didn’t even realize that I came out, because their heads were to the ground. Everyone put their heads to the ground to protect themselves.

Kalman Liebskind (Host): You go outside with him, and where do you go?

Yasmin Porat: And we walk the length of the yard, we reach the two rocks of the terraces, we climb them like so, and then we’re standing right on the road. We’re just across the street from the YAMAM [Israeli forces] and it’s a small road, a narrow road. Lots of police aiming their guns at us. They are shouting at him on the megaphone what I imagine was, “Let her go! Let her go!” We approach them a little more, he gives me a push, I quickly run to the police, they quickly arrest him. That’s the story of how I was saved. That’s where I was saved and held by the police. I stay with them for another three hours of battle. I simply crossed to the side of the police, but I stayed on the scene at Be’eri and at that incident until 8:30 PM.

Asaf Liberman (Host): And the terrorist that released you, what did they do to him?

Yasmin Porat: They arrested him. They arrested him and interrogated him. And by the way, today I know from the people who were there with me that he gave up lots of information, they got lots and lots of information from him that, in retrospect, saved many people, which we can say is heartening.

Kalman Liebskind (Host): When you are saved, he crosses over to the side of the police, everyone you left behind, our people, are alive?

Yasmin Porat: They stay in exactly the same situation, They are all alive. You know I didn’t count. If you had about 40 terrorists, you’re still left with 40 terrorists, because only one surrendered out of the 40. So it doesn’t change the balance of power. You stay in the same situation.

Kalman Liebskind (Host): But there were about 15 of our people.

Yasmin Porat: Great. So now they’re 14 with 39 terrorists, only two people left. And it was masses of people. And then I cross over to the police. And right away I tell them that I am able to talk, and that they can interrogate me and ask me whatever they want. And I did actually sit there with the commander of the unit, and I describe to him what the house looks like and where the terrorists are and where the hostages are. I actually draw for him: “Look, here, on the lawn there are four hostages that are lying this way on the lawn. Here are two that are lying under the terrace. And in the living room there is a woman lying like this, and a woman lying like this.” And I tell them about the twins [Yanai and Liel Hatsroni] and [their guardian and aunt Ayala Hatsroni], I didn’t see them. You know what, really, when I leave, they are the only ones I don’t see. I heard Liel the whole time, so I know for certain that they were there. I believe they were to my left – never mind. I tried to explain to them that from somewhere near the kitchen is where I heard the screams coming from. I don’t see her, but I hear her, and I hear where the screams are coming from. I tried to explain to them where all the hostages were. Obviously there were more terrorists in the house than hostages. The terrorists were in the reinforced safe room, they were in the bathroom, they were spread out under the whole terrace, under a living room window that gave protection. There was a window that protected from bullets, so lots of terrorists sat under it. Let’s say they grabbed the better spots to hide.

I remain there during those three hours, they interrogate me at least three to four times to understand what the house looks like and what to do, and how many hostages there are. And you see that they just don’t understand the scale of it. The first time I tell them that there are about 40 terrorists, they tell me, “It can’t be. It seems like you’re exaggerating.” They don’t say it [disparagingly]. “Look here at us, we are forty,” I tell them. “There’s more of them than you.’ They didn’t believe me! Our army was also still naive.

Kalman Liebskind (Host): So even at that stage, the police did not grasp the magnitude of the event.

Yasmin Porat: It did not grasp the magnitude of the event. When I say 40, they think maybe I’m exaggerating a little, that I’m hysterical.

Asaf Liberman (Host): Wow.

Yasmin Porat: That’s it. And now I’m connecting you to a little bit of the testimony of Hadas Dagan. It was not a testimony, I mean that I spoke to her personally, to understand what happened to my partner. Because in the end he was killed next to her, and I wanted to understand. And then through that story I also heard the answer about Liel, more or less. In any case, I leave. Understand, everyone [else] stays there. A battle takes place. Now they know more details than me. And the battle doesn’t end. There were attempts at a negotiation. Even that terrorist that surrendered spoke on the megaphone with his friends, in order to try to maybe convince them.

Kalman Liebskind (Host): For the [Israeli] police, this time.

Yasmin Porat: Yes, for the [Israeli] police, he speaks on the megaphone in Arabic, while naked. He screams at them. It was really … you know. And they aren’t convinced.

Kalman Liebskind (Host): Can I say something here in parentheses, Yasmin? We must assume that had this large group that was with you, this group of terrorists, known how good its position was on the kibbutz – were it elsewhere on the kibbutz, this story would have ended differently, right?

Yasmin Porat: You mean if they had known…

Kalman Liebskind (Host): That they could have just taken you and kidnapped you!

Yasmin Porat: Ah yes, yes, yes.

Kalman Liebskind (Host): They don’t have to negotiate with anyone, they don’t have to call 100 for the police. Nothing!

Yasmin Porat: Look, the first … Today we see the whole kidnapping story. You see that most of the kidnappings occurred in the morning, at 10, 11, 12 o’clock. By 3 [pm], like every [Israeli] citizen could, they think that the army is already everywhere. They could have left with us back and forth 10 times. But they didn’t believe that was the situation, so they asked for the police. In any case, I’ll cut it short for you. For another three hours, I am at a very intense battle. But now I am on the side of the so-called good guys. But everyone else is under very, very heavy crossfire, with terrorists who I understood were not cooperating, and were saying, “if you don’t let us leave alive, then everyone dies.” And at a certain point, a tank arrives opposite the house. I think it was 7 or 7:30 pm. Understand, it was still daylight saving time, and it was starting to get dark. And I thought to myself, why are they shooting tank shells into the house. And I asked one of the people who was with me, why are they shooting? So they explained to me that it was to break the walls, in order to help purify the house. I will now turn for a bit to my conversation with Hadas. I know Hadas Dagan, who as I explained was one of four people lying down outside next to each other. And another two lay down under the terrace.

Kalman Liebskind (Host): I remind you that Hadas was the lady of the house [where they were originally caught by Hamas fighters].

Yasmin Porat: Yes. The lady of the house Hadas Dagan. She believes there were two booms. I know there were the two shells shot by the tank. She didn’t even know that, because again, they can’t see anything. They are flat on the ground. She told me in these words: “Yasmin, when the two big booms hit, I felt like I flew in the air.” She felt that she died and came back to life. Briefly she feels she flew in the air and landed, though I don’t think that occurred. She told me, “It took me 2-3 minutes to open my eyes, I didn’t feel my body. I was completely paralyzed. When I opened my eyes, I saw that my Adi [Dagan] is dying.” His main artery was cut and he’s bleeding all over. She tells me she put her thumb on his main artery, but he was already dead. And then she told me, “Your Tal also stopped moving at that point,” because they lay on either side of her. Today I believe that they were human shields for her, naturally. They were two big guys and she is a small woman. They lay on her sides, and they just…

Asaf Liberman (Host): Yasmin, there are two things that require clarification for a moment.

Yasmin Porat: Yeah.

Asaf Liberman (Host): At what stage, and how did all the hostages still held in the house die? And how does Hadas get out of there alive?

Yasmin Porat: Right.

Kalman Liebskind (Host): The only one. It must be said, from that whole event, only you and Hadas came out alive.

Yasmin Porat: True. Understand the whole incident – I left there at 8:30 pm. I leave [the house], at 5:30 pm I am with the police. And I stay until 8:30 pm while there is a crazy battle. Hours of battle between the two sides. They’re all there! Understand. There were 4 people lying next to each other on the lawn in the garden. So they are always there, vulnerable to hundreds of thousands of bullets and shrapnel in the air there. There is no way to avoid damage from that. To tell you in the end who died by whose bullet? There is no way to know. It was from the crossfire. To my understanding. Because Hadas got out alive. And she says there were no executions, or anything like that. At least not the people with her. Because she tells me that after she got up from the two explosions, she lifted her head, or something like that, she felt that her husband was bleeding on her. She was covered in his blood. I also met her afterwards. And she also told me that my Tal who was lying down – he stopped moving by that point. And then, as I recall, she tells me this, she tells me: “The girl [12-year-old Liel Hatsroni] did not stop screaming all those hours. She didn’t stop screaming.” So I said, “I remember, when I was there for the first hour, she did not stop screaming.” And then she told me, “Yasmin, when those two shells hit, she stopped screaming. There was silence then.” So what do you glean from that? That after that very massive incident, the shooting, which concluded with two shells, that is pretty much when everyone died. At least that is what I know from my conversation with Hadas, who describes it. And she, for some reason, maybe because she is a small woman, and all the shrapnel flew at her husband and my partner, somehow she – listen, she did not look normal when she got out. She looked – I met her in the morning, and if you would have seen how she looked in the evening, it’s not the same person. But somehow she survived it. No shrapnel hit her. She was also hit by shrapnel, but no shrapnel hit her where –

Asaf Liberman (Host): So all the terrorists were simply killed there?

Yasmin Porat: They were all killed. All the hostages and all the terrorists. A house full of bodies. Understand…

Asaf Liberman (Host): And Hadas somehow…

Yasmin Porat: Somehow, out of all that killing, it’s like God wanted her to be with us and saved her. She walks away from all that inferno. When I saw her, she was– understand, when I met her in the morning, she was dressed nicely, her hair was combed, you know, a normal person. When she walked out of there, all her hair was on end, full of dust, with styrofoam in it.

Asaf Liberman (Host): Do you understand why there was no determination that Liel died until yesterday?

Yasmin Porat: I understood that to this day they have not found any of her remains. I think that some of the explosives there, they threw grenades and – I don’t know much about ammunition. Some of it was bigger than rifle bullets. I know they catch fire – and I also see now in photographs, part of the house is torched. The house of Hadas and Adi no longer exists. I don’t know how that happened. I can’t describe what these houses look like. Okay, you see it. If you ask me, I estimate, based on what happened in other houses, she apparently burned completely. She [Liel] did not flee from there. They did not kidnap her. I’m telling you, they did not get out of there. It was no longer the stage that anyone got out of there. No. We’re talking about 8:30 pm, total darkness, the house is burned, full of – at that point there was a lot of army there. YAMAM and MATKAL and they surrounded the house. That means that Liel could not have gotten out of there. And Hadas, who was there for all four hours of the battle, recalls that she didn’t stop screaming, the girl [Liel Hatsroni]. And suddenly she stops.

Asaf Liberman (Host): Okay.

Kalman Liebskind (Host): Yasmin Porat. Yasmin, thanks a lot for the–

Yasmin Porat: Thanks to you.

Kalman Liebskind (Host): -for sharing with us this really crazy story.

Yasmin Porat: [Sighs]. Yes. Thank you, and may we only know better days.

Kalman Liebskind (Host): Only better days.

Asaf Liberman (Host): Thank you Yasmin. Thank you very much.

Yasmin Porat
Liel Hatsroni
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
Kibbutz Be'eri

https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-child-burned-completely-israeli-tank-fire-kibbutz/41706

Did Israel build a bunker under al-Shifa hospital?
Ali Abunimah 16 November 2023



Israel’s ongoing assault on al-Shifa hospital – where 7,000 people are currently besieged in desperate conditions – may be part of its attempt to prove its claims that Hamas operates a sophisticated command bunker under the hospital.
That James Bond villain-like lair was depicted in an animation released by the Israeli army last month.

Israel has never offered any evidence for its claims. But as I explain in the video at the top of this article recorded on Wednesday, its assertions go back to at least 2009.



That year, The New York Times reported that “The Israeli intelligence chief, Yuval Diskin, in a report to the Israeli cabinet, said that the Gaza-based leadership of Hamas was in underground housing beneath the No. 2 building of al Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza. That allegation cannot be confirmed.”
Also in 2009, Haaretz reported that “Senior Hamas officials in Gaza are hiding out in a ‘bunker’ built by Israel, intelligence officials suspect.”

“Many are believed to be in the basements of the al-Shifa hospital complex in Gaza City, which was refurbished during Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip,” the Tel Aviv newspaper added.

And in 2014, the pro-Israel publication Tablet asserted that “The Israelis are so sure about the location of the Hamas bunker … not because they are trying to score propaganda points, or because it has been repeatedly mentioned in passing by Western reporters – but because they built it.”

“Back in 1983, when Israel still ruled Gaza, they built a secure underground operating room and tunnel network beneath al-Shifa hospital – which is one among several reasons why Israeli security sources are so sure that there is a main Hamas command bunker in or around the large cement basement beneath the area of Building 2 of the hospital,” Tablet added.

Israel claims it destroyed underground infrastructure in 2021

During its assault on Gaza in May 2021, Israel heavily bombed the area around al-Shifa, perpetrating what came to be known as the al-Wihda Street massacre.

“The air raids turned one of the busiest streets in Gaza, and the main access point to the strip’s chief hospital al-Shifa, into a crater-marked moonscape,” Britain’s The Independent reported at the time.

“In place of apartment blocks are mangled heaps of concrete fringed with curls of iron rebar and scraps of belongings.”

When challenged over the death and devastation its attacks caused to apartment buildings and their civilian residents near al-Shifa, the Israeli military claimed that it was attacking “underground military infrastructure” that was located under the road.

“The underground military facilities collapsed causing the foundations of the civilian houses above them to collapse as well leading to unintended casualties,” the army added.

Israel never presented any evidence to support these claims.

But now, as it besieges and attacks the hospital again, Israel expects the world to believe that Hamas would keep its main command center in exactly the location Israeli and American newspapers have said it is in for years, and which Israel asserted in 2021 had been substantially destroyed.

Still, given Israel’s propensity to lie, it may well “discover” an underground facility which Israel itself built, and try to present it to the world as vindication of its accusations.

Israel releases more videos

On Thursday evening, the Israeli military released a video showing a cache of weapons displayed on the ground in an outdoor area, that it claims was found in al-Shifa hospital.

The military offered no evidence that the weapons – about a half dozen rifles, some magazines, hand grenades and what appears to be a drill – were found inside the hospital.



It also released a video showing what it claims is the entrance to a tunnel near the hospital. The brief video shows a hole in the ground surrounded by overturned earth and rubble, making it difficult to discern what is depicted.
Earlier this month, Israel claimed to have found the entrance to a Hamas tunnel near the Qatari-funded Sheikh Hamad hospital. The opening was in fact a water reservoir for the hospital.





Biden admits “indiscriminate bombing” by Israel

Trapped inside al-Shifa, some 7,000 people face a catastrophic situation and a slow death, without a water supply, food, medicine, medical oxygen, fuel or electricity.

On Thursday, Israel continued to lay siege to al-Shifa as its troops ransacked buildings and bulldozers carried out excavations around the hospital and its grounds, including severing the main water line.

This comes as US President Joe Biden continued to push Israel’s claims that Hamas uses the hospital as a command center.

He also repeated previously debunked atrocity propaganda that Hamas fighters beheaded and burned dozens of Israeli babies on 7 October.

And despite other comments Wednesday evening that show Biden to be out of touch with the realities of the situation, he did inadvertently admit that Israel has been bombing Gaza indiscriminately.

Defending what he claimed was a careful Israeli assault on al-Shifa, the president said “this is a different story than I believe was occurring before, an indiscriminate bombing.”

This admission means there can be no doubt that Biden has been arming Israel while knowing it is indiscriminately killing civilians, including thousands of children – a confession that will be of great interest to those trying to hold him legally accountable for war crimes and stop the slaughter in Gaza.



Patients dying

Speaking with Al Jazeera Arabic on Thursday, al-Shifa hospital’s director Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya said that one dialysis patient had died earlier in the day and four others faced imminent death.

In total the hospital is caring for 45 patients who require dialysis – something they can’t receive with no electricity to run the machines.



Two of some 650 injured people had died because staff could not provide effective treatment. Wounds he said are becoming seriously infected, some with maggots.
Of 39 premature babies in the hospital, three had died in recent days, according to Abu Salmiya.

With no electricity or fuel, incubators have stopped functioning. Purified water to make special formula for the babies has run out, so staff are using ordinary water and some of the infants are now sick with diarrhea, infections and fever.



Thousands of displaced people, many of them children, have no food and are suffering from worsening desperation and hunger.
Meanwhile, according to Dr. Abu Salmiya, the hospital compound is besieged from all sides by tanks and bulldozers, but no one can see clearly what they are doing.

He said that anyone who tries to move between hospital buildings is shot at by snipers or drones.

Israelis refuse to speak

According to Dr. Abu Salmiya, hospital administrators tried to send a delegation to speak with the Israeli military and ask for food, water, fuel, medicine and other urgent relief supplies.

On Wednesday, Israel presented a few guns and other equipment it claims to have found in one al-Shifa hospital building.

The so-called evidence did not corroborate Israel’s longstanding claims that Hamas has a sophisticated command bunker under the hospital.

It was met with the same widespread skepticism and derision as the farcical “evidence” of Hamas activity that Israel offered after it raided the Rantisi children’s hospital days earlier.

Over the 48 hours that Israeli forces have occupied parts of the al-Shifa compound, no shots have been fired at them, according to Dr. Abu Salmiya.

Palestinian resistance groups have firmly denied they use hospitals for military activities and have regularly called for impartial international bodies to visit the hospitals and investigate Israel’s claims.

“Israeli soldiers briefly exchanged fire with gunmen outside the hospital before going in, a senior military official said, but more than 12 hours after it began, the operation appeared more like a police raid than a pitched battle,” The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

The newspaper quoted a witness inside the hospital recounting that the Israelis “are digging and excavating and breaking tiles and looking.”

While there is a particular focus on al-Shifa, Israel is also now laying siege to al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City.



Biden repeats Israeli lies

On Wednesday evening, President Joe Biden repeated Israeli assertions that Hamas has a major command center located under al-Shifa hospital.

“Here’s the situation,” Biden told reporters after meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping in San Francisco. “You have a circumstance where the first war crime is being committed by Hamas by having their headquarters, their military hidden under a hospital. And that’s a fact. That’s what’s happened.”

Administration officials have made similar assertions in recent days but have adamantly declined to offer any evidence for them. Nonetheless, they are a green light for Israel’s attack on al-Shifa.

“We’ve discussed the need for them to be incredibly careful,” Biden added. “You have a circumstance where you know there is a fair number of Hamas terrorists. Hamas has already said publicly that they plan on attacking Israel again like they did before, to where they were cutting babies’ heads off to burn – burning women and children alive.”

Last month Biden notoriously stated that he had seen photos corroborating Israeli claims that Palestinian fighters had beheaded dozens of beheaded babies, before the White House had to admit the president had been shown no such photos.

Israel has presented no evidence for that claim and many of its other assertions. Meanwhile there’s a growing body of evidence that Israeli forces killed many of their own civilians on and after 7 October.

Defending Israel’s actions at al-Shifa, Biden asserted, “they’re also bringing in incubators. They’re bringing in other – other means to help the people in the hospital, and they’ve given the doctors and – I’m told – the doctors and nurses and personnel an opportunity to get out of harm’s way.”

Were Biden well-informed, he would know that al-Shifa and other hospitals in Gaza do not lack incubators, but the electricity and fuel to power them.

Notably, al-Shifa director Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera earlier that the Israelis had delivered no supplies to the hospital – in spite of propaganda by the Israeli army designed to market its attack on the hospital as a “humanitarian” operation.

Abu Salmiya said that despite the dire circumstances, the medical staff would not abandon their patients and would stay there and die with them if it came to that.

Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
al-Shifa Hospital


https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/did-israel-build-bunker-under-al-shifa-hospital

https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2023/11/did-israel-build-bunker-under-al-shifa.html

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 44: WHO says Israel turned Al-Shifa Hospital into ‘death zone,’ thousands of Palestinians ‘humiliated’ as they flee to southern Gaza
Mustafa Abu SneinehNovember 19, 2023
Palestinians pray during the funeral of their relatives, who were killed after an Israeli airstrike on the city of Deir al-Balah, at Al-Aqsa Hospital, November 19, 2023. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)
Palestinians pray during the funeral of their relatives, who were killed after an Israeli airstrike on the city of Deir al-Balah, at Al-Aqsa Hospital, November 19, 2023. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)
Casualties

12,012 killed*, including 4,900 children, and 32,300 wounded in Gaza
215 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,200
*This figure covers the casualties from October 7 to November 16. Due to breakdowns in communication networks within the Gaza Strip (particularly in northern Gaza), the Gaza Ministry of Health has not been able to regularly update its tolls.

Key Developments

World Health Organization described Al-Shifa Hospital, which was raided by Israeli forces last week and was emptied of nearly all patients, medical staff, and displaced civilians, as a “death zone.”
Doctors Without Borders said a convoy evacuating 137 of its Palestinian staff members and their families was targeted by Israeli forces, killing one relative and injuring another on Saturday.
Palestinians who were injured, elderly, or have kids were forced to get out of vehicles and walk an average of 10 hours for 14 km to Salah Al-Deen Street’s checkpoint.
Horrific stories spread of women harassed, young men stripped naked in front of the crowds, doctors and journalists detained and interrogated, and people sent into a hole dug in the ground at the Salah Al-Deen Street checkpoint.
As of November 11, 807,000 Palestinians remained in the areas of the northern Gaza Strip, after an estimated 400,000 fled south of the Gaza Valley throughout the first month of the war.
Jordan sets up a field hospital in the city of Nablus, which has raised alarm in anticipation of a further deterioration of the situation in the occupied West Bank.
The Israel Prison Service imposes punitive measures against Palestinian prisoners, including poor-quality and insufficient food, denial of access to the exercise yard, daily power cuts, medical neglect and restriction on family visits.
Al-Shifa Hospital turned into “death zone” as almost 400,000 Palestinians flee north of Gaza Strip

The WHO described Al-Shifa Hospital, which was raided by Israeli forces last week and was emptied of nearly all patients, medical staff, and displaced civilians, as a “death zone.”

“Signs of shelling and gunfire were evident. The team saw a mass grave at the entrance of the hospital and was told more than 80 people were buried there,” the WHO team who spent an hour inside Al-Shifa said.

On Sunday, Mohammed Al-Zaqout, the director of the Gaza hospital, told Al-Jazeera Arabic that four premature babies had died in Al-Shifa, which stopped receiving patients and directed them to be treated at the Indonesian Hospital.

Zaqout said that medical staff at Al-Shifa are in talks with the WHO to evacuate the remaining 32 premature babies in the incubators. There are still 25 medical staff and 291 patients inside Al-Shifa as of Sunday morning, two of them in the ICU and 22 in the dialysis department.

“Lack of clean water, fuel, medicines, food and other essential aid over the last 6 weeks have caused Al-Shifa Hospital…to essentially stop functioning as a medical facility,” the WHO said.

“Corridors and the hospital grounds were filled with medical and solid waste, increasing the risk of infection. Patients and health staff with whom they spoke were terrified for their safety and health, and pleaded for evacuation,” the organization added.

Israel claimed that Hamas fighters had a command and control center and web of tunnels under Al-Shifa, while the U.S. said that, based on intelligence sources, the hospital functioned as a node for Hamas’s operations. Hamas and Palestinian resistance factions were adamant in denying these claims and repeatedly called for international investigation teams to inspect the facility.

Almost a week after its brutal siege and raid on Al-Shifa on November 15, Israeli forces have yet to publish evidence of Hamas’ tunnels or weapons cache in Al-Shifa. The occupation forces released a video showing a few rifles, bullet magazines, and bullet-proof vests, claiming it was left behind at Al-Shifa by fighters of Hamas. The video was taken down and then reposted after removing a section in which a laptop was presented as evidence of Hamas’s presence at Al-Shifa.

Al Jazeera political analyst Marwan Bishara commented on the Israeli forces’ video, saying, “I’m baffled as to why Hamas keeps ‘leaving behind’ guns for the Israeli military to ‘find’ as evidence for their presence under hospitals!”

“Oh yea, leave the gun, take the cannolis,” he wrote in X, in a satirical reference to a scene from The Godfather.

Doctors Without Borders convoy targeted

The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced on Saturday evening that 12,012 Palestinians were martyred in the Israeli bombardments and airstrikes since October 7, and around 32,300 were wounded.

Until October 17, there were 3,750 people reportedly missing or under the rubble, 1,750 of them children. Israeli bombardments killed 4,900 children, 3,155 women, and 690 elderly people.

Two-thirds of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip have stopped operating, and medical organizations such as the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) are struggling to respond to calls to evacuate the wounded or rescue the trapped under the rubble.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said a convoy evacuating 137 MSF Palestinian staff members and their families was targeted by Israeli forces, killing one MSF employee’s relative and injuring another on Saturday.

“MSF condemns in the strongest terms this deliberate attack,” the organization said.

MSF informed the Israeli forces of their movement towards the southern Gaza Strip. The convoy was made of five cars, all marked with the MSF emblem on the roof, carrying 137 people, 65 of them children, who were stuck for almost a week in Gaza City.

However, they could not cross the overcrowded Israeli checkpoint at Salah Al-Deen Street and had to drive back 7 km north into Gaza, when they were targeted in Al-Wehda Street.

“MSF calls again to urgently allow the evacuation of our staff, as well as of thousands of other people, trapped by fighting and living in extremely dire conditions in northern Gaza. We are calling for an immediate ceasefire, which is the only way for corridors to be implemented in order to safely evacuate trapped civilians,” it said in a statement.

Salah Al-Deen Street checkpoint: ‘The corridor of death and humiliation’

For the past week, Israeli tanks and forces were stationed on the east and west of Salah Al-Deen Street, which cut the northern Gaza Strip into two halves. Palestinians evacuating areas of intense fighting in Gaza City, Sheikh Ridwan, Beit Lahia, Jabalia, and Beit Hanoun had to pass through an Israeli military checkpoint. Wafa correspondent Aseel Al-Akhras, who left Al-Shifa Hospital over the weekend, was among the thousands of people who took the perilous journey to the south on foot.

She described the “humanitarian route” that Israel designated for civilians to flee south as the “corridor of humiliation and death.” Akhras said that Palestinians who were injured, elderly, or have kids, were forced to get out of vehicles and walk an average of 10 hours the 14km south to Salah Al-Deen Street’s checkpoint, which was surrounded by tanks.”

She said she was detained at the checkpoint for more than an hour and a half.

“The displaced girls and women were harassed, and one of them had her gold stolen. Some of the displaced were forced to completely remove their clothes in the cold, in front of all of us,” she said.

Akhras said that Israeli tanks caused a cloud of soil and dirt to cover people while waiting. They were asked to raise their IDs, while some of them were taken into a hole dug near the checkpoint.

“We were interrogated by the occupation soldiers, and I was separated from my family. Doctors and Red Crescent employees were also interrogated and arrested…we saw them shooting a young man whose fate we do not yet know. They also forced six young men to kneel before the [Israeli] occupation flag at gunpoint,” she said.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, as of November 11, there were about 807,000 Palestinians living in the areas of the northern Gaza Strip. An estimated 400,000 fled to the south of Gaza Valley to the areas of Khan Yunis, Dier al-Balah, and Rafah.

In the north of Gaza Valley, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that 183,000 forcibly displaced people are sheltered in 154 UNRWA facilities.

On Sunday morning, Russia announced that it evacuated 550 people with Palestinian and Russian dual citizenship from Gaza, 230 of whom are children.

In the past 24 hours, Israel bombed hospitals, schools, mosques, and family houses in various areas in Gaza. On Sunday, a shell targeted the children’s department at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, Al Jazeera Arabic reported. In Al-Nafaq Street in Gaza, Israeli warplanes launched an airstrike on a house on Saturday evening, while in the central Gaza Strip, at least 31 people were killed in bombardments. In Nuseirat camp and Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, 15 people were killed on Sunday morning. Al Jazeera Arabic reported that Israeli forces destroyed four mosques in Jabalia refugee camp, bringing the number of completely destroyed mosques to 76 and targeted churches to three.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II called for a ceasefire in Gaza to put an end to the humanitarian crisis created by the “ugly war against civilians” during a meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.

“Israel’s continuation of its hideous war on Gaza and its illegal violations in the West Bank and Jerusalem will lead to an explosion in the situation in the entire region,” said King Abdullah.

U.S. President Joe Biden stressed in an Op-ed in The Washington Post on Saturday that there will be no ceasefire before Hamas releases the Israeli captives taken on October 7.

“As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a ceasefire is not peace,” Biden wrote.

Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s Foreign Minister and former spy chief, warned of the ongoing war on the Gaza Strip, asserting that Israel’s possession of nuclear capabilities could trigger an arms race in the West Asia region.

“The ongoing possession of nuclear weapons by Israel, coupled with the failure to denuclearize the region, will escalate the nuclear arms race, leading to increased nuclearization in the area. This is not a favorable situation for both the region and the world,” Fidan said in an interview with Al Jazeera Arabic.

West Bank: sixth Palestinian prisoner dies in Israeli custody, Israeli forces kill three Palestinians

As tension intensified in the occupied West Bank, Jordan set up a field hospital in the city of Nablus, which alarmed Palestinians anticipating a further deterioration in the situation.

Jordan had set up field hospitals in the West Bank’s cities of Ramallah in 2000 and Jenin in 2001 during the early days of the Second Intifada.

As of Sunday morning, 215 Palestinians have been martyred in the West Bank by Israeli forces and settlers.

In Jenin, Issam Al-Fayed, 46, a person with special needs, was killed on Sunday morning by Israeli fire near the “horse” roundabout at the entrance of Jenin refugee camp. Omar Al-Laham, 20, from Dheisheh refugee camp, was killed when Israeli forces stormed the camp. A third Palestinian was killed in Aida, another refugee camp near Bethlehem in the southern West Bank. On Sunday, Thaer Samih Abu Assab, 38, was the sixth Palestinian prisoner to die in Israeli custody since October 7.

Qaddoura Fares, the head of the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, told Wafa that Abu Assab is from the town of Qalqilya and died in the notorious Negev Desert Prison. Abu Assab was arrested in May 2005 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The Commission said Abu Assab’s death was a “premeditated assassination operation.”

Last week, Ahmad Muhammad Mari, 33, died inside Megiddo prison. On November 6, Majed Ahmad Zaqoul, 32, from the Gaza Strip, also died in the prison. In October, prisoners Omar Daraghmeh, 58, from Tubas, and Arafat Hamdan, 25, from Ramallah, died in Israeli custody. Another Palestinian prisoner from the Gaza Strip, whose identity is yet to be identified by the Commission, was also announced dead.

The Commission said that the Israel Prison Service has imposed punitive measures against Palestinian prisoners, including insufficient and low-quality food, denial of access to the exercise yard, daily power cuts, medical neglect, and restrictions on family visitation.

There are 7,000 Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli jails as of November 6, according to the Addameer prisoners’ rights group. Almost 2,070 of them are serving administrative detention terms, a policy used by Israel to detain Palestinians without charge or trial indefinitely.

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https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/operation-al-aqsa-flood-day-44-who-says-israel-turned-al-shifa-hospital-into-death-zone-and-thousands-of-palestinians-humiliated-as-they-flee-to-southern-gaza/

U.S. and Russia ‘can’t stop’ Turkey’s new Syria incursion
By ALEXANDER WARD, MATT BERG and LAWRENCE UKENYE
11/22/2022 03:59 PM EST
Syrian Kurds attend a funeral of people killed in Turkish airstrikes.
Syrian Kurds attend a funeral of people killed in Turkish airstrikes in the village of Al Malikiyah, northern Syria, Monday, Nov. 21, 2022. | Baderkhan Ahmad/AP Photo
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With help from Phelim Kine and Lara Seligman

PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 28.

Turkey is threatening to kill more U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters in Syria — and the United States and Russia might not try very hard to stop it.

Turkish President RECEP TAYYIP ERDOĞAN vowed to soon launch a ground attack on U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria, claiming they were responsible for a deadly terrorist attack last week.

“We have been bearing down on terrorists for a few days with our planes, cannons and guns,” Erdoğan said Tuesday, alluding to Turkey’s recent lethal aerial bombardments in Syria. “God willing, we will root out all of them as soon as possible, together with our tanks, our soldiers.”

It’s unclear if it was Kurdish separatists who killed six people in the heart of Istanbul on Nov. 13. The Kurds deny the allegation, after all. But experts say it has presented Erdoğan with a pretext to delve deeper into northern Syria, a push he’s long wanted to do.

“Turkey is quite serious about the current Syria offensive,” the Middle East Institute’s and St. Lawrence University’s HOWARD EISSENSTAT told NatSec Daily. “This fits with both long-standing Turkish assumptions about its security interests and Erdoğan’s need to look strong in advance of elections scheduled for June. Under the current circumstances, Russia or the U.S. might be able to impose limits on Turkish actions, but they can’t stop them entirely.”

Both have reasons to be worried about Turkey launching a ground attack.

Russia backs Syrian President BASHAR AL-ASSAD while Turkey supports rebels seeking to topple him. “We understand and respect Turkey’s concerns about ensuring its own security,” Kremlin spokesperson DMITRY PESKOV told reporters. “At the same time, we call on all parties to refrain from steps that could lead to the destabilization of the overall situation.”

About 900 U.S. troops, meanwhile, are in Syria to keep ISIS at bay alongside Syrian Democratic Forces and fear heavy fighting could disrupt their plans.

Turkey has a legitimate right to defend itself and its citizens, National Security Council spokesperson JOHN KIRBY told NatSec Daily during a Tuesday news conference, but added cross-border operations “might force a reaction by some of our SDF partners that would limit and constrain their ability to fight against ISIS…and we want to be able to keep the pressure on ISIS.”

“We continue to urge for deescalation on all sides and in our conversations,” Pentagon deputy press secretary SABRINA SINGH later told reporters.

But those statements don’t fully reflect the state of play, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s SONER CAGAPTAY told NatSec Daily, because “Ankara has just about aligned all-stars for an incursion.”

The U.S. may not resist too strongly since it wants Turkey, a NATO ally, to accept Sweden and Finland’s accession to the alliance. Cagaptay said a Monday State Department statement that barely lambasted Turkey over the violence in Syria was evidence of Washington’s light approach. “I can’t recall any statement that nicely worded about Turkey’s incursion into Syria in a long time,” he said.

And Russia is providing millions for Turkey’s economy and energy sector, propping up Erdoğan ahead of next year’s vote. In exchange, experts say Erdoğan may finally accept Assad as Syria’s legitimate ruler, effectively bringing an end to what remains of the war in Syria.

If that’s the case, it seems the U.S. and Russia may stand aside as Turkey kills more Kurds — and American allies — in Syria.

The Inbox

U.S. LEADERS IN ASIA: Vice President KAMALA HARRIS warned of U.S. intervention if China takes aim at the Philippines, our own PHELIM KINE reports.

In a visit to the Philippines, Harris pushed back against Beijing’s expansive territorial claims in the region, pledging $7.5 million for the Philippine Coast Guard. On Monday, Harris also warned of a U.S. response if there is “an armed attack” on Filipino ships or aircraft in the South China Sea, invoking a treaty between the allies.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson ZHAO LIJIAN clapped back on Tuesday, warning that U.S.-Philippines cooperation “should not target or hurt other countries’ interests.”

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary LLOYD AUSTIN met with his Chinese counterpart in Cambodia on Tuesday, discussing strained bilateral relations and regional and global security issues, the Associated Press’ HENG SINITH reports.

The two met on the sidelines of a regional meeting, marking the second time in six months Austin and Gen. WEI FENGHE met face-to-face. It comes just over a week after President JOE BIDEN met with Chinese leader XI JINPING in Indonesia, a gathering widely seen as an effort to ease tensions between the two world powers.

On the issue of Taiwan, Austin assured Wei of Biden’s commitment to the “one China” policy, but called on China to refrain from taking destabilizing actions toward the island nation, Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. PAT RYDER said.

EUROPE’S NEW MIGRANT INFLUX: Europe is struggling even more to properly welcome thousands of people seeking asylum from war and famine.

Specifically, the EU plus Norway and Switzerland recorded about 564,000 applications in August this year — an increase of 62 percent from the same period last year, according to the European Union Agency for Asylum.

That increase doesn’t include the millions of Ukrainian refugees moving westward since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24. “Tents and sleeping bags have become a common sight along the canal in central Brussels, as well as in underpasses and railway stations, as some asylum seekers are forced to wait months for shelter after lodging applications,” per The Financial Times’ SAM FLEMING and GUY CHAZAN, underscoring just how overwhelmed the reception system is right now.

NAVY BLAMES IRAN FOR DRONE ATTACK: The U.S. Navy confirmed Iran’s involvement in a Nov. 15 drone attack on a commercial tanker, identifying the drone as a Shahed-136 — the same type Iran has supplied to Russia for use in Ukraine.

The attack fits “a historical pattern of Iran’s increasing use of a lethal capability directly or through its proxies across the Middle East,” reads a statement by U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.

“The Iranian attack on a commercial tanker transiting international waters was deliberate, flagrant and dangerous, endangering the lives of the ship’s crew and destabilizing maritime security in the Middle East,” said Vice Adm. BRAD COOPER, the command’s chief.

U.S. officials had already said they suspected Iran was behind the strike.

IT’S TUESDAY: Thanks for tuning in to NatSec Daily. This space is reserved for the top U.S. and foreign officials, the lawmakers, the lobbyists, the experts and the people like you who care about how the natsec sausage gets made. Aim your tips and comments at [email protected] and [email protected], and follow us on Twitter at @alexbward and @mattberg33.

While you’re at it, follow the rest of POLITICO’s national security team: @nahaltoosi, @woodruffbets, @politicoryan, @PhelimKine, @BryanDBender, @laraseligman, @connorobrienNH, @paulmcleary, @leehudson, @AndrewDesiderio, @magmill95, @ericgeller, @johnnysaks130, @ErinBanco and @Lawrence_Ukenye.

Flashpoints

ARCTIC POWER: Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN touted Moscow’s growing footprint in the Arctic at a Tuesday flag-raising ceremony that commemorated two new nuclear-powered icebreakers that will allow the country to have year-round access to western parts of the Arctic, Reuters reports.

The icebreakers “are part of our large-scale, systematic work to re-equip and replenish the domestic icebreaker fleet, to strengthen Russia’s status as a great Arctic power,” Putin said.

The Arctic has become more significant due to climate change as melting ice has prompted countries like Russia, the U.S. and China to try to increase their influence in the region, which could also affect trade and shipping lane access.

Keystrokes

KISS IT GOODBYE, FOR NOW: The idea of creating a new platform where the government and the private sector can rapidly share data on cyber threats has hit a Fort Meade-sized speed bump: the National Security Agency, our friends over at Morning Cybersecurity (for Pros!) report.

Until recently, the joint collaborative environment looked like a solid bet to make it into the final version of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, featuring in both the House and Senate markups of the must-pass defense bill.

But the NSA began voicing objections to the JCE in the last few weeks, tilting the scales against the provision on the Hill, two Hill staffers granted anonymity to speak freely about the proposal told MC.

The NSA’s “biggest concern” about the legislation is that it “would overly constrain” the NSA and CISA’s ongoing threat-sharing efforts, ROB JOYCE, the director of NSA’s cybersecurity directorate, told MC.

The Complex

ON THE WAY: The Army is on track to award the multibillion-dollar contract for the UH-60 Black Hawk replacement by the end of the year, our friends over at Morning Defense (for Pros!) report.

Competing for the deal are Bell, with its V-280 Valor tiltrotor, and a Sikorsky-Bell team, with the SB-1 Defiant coaxial helicopter for the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, Army acquisition chief DOUG BUSH told reporters Monday. Bell estimates the program is worth more than $100 billion because of foreign military sales opportunities.

Black Hawks won’t be phased out of the Army overnight. The service intends to buy them through fiscal 2028 and does not anticipate the replacement to come online until 2035.

On the Hill

NOT WINGING IT: Republicans have an answer for anyone asking about the effect the party’s populist wing might have on foreign policy: Sorry, what?

Lawmakers at the Halifax International Security Forum told our own ANDREW DESIDERIO that “Congress is likely to allocate well more than the $38 billion the Biden administration requested for Ukraine’s military and economic needs as part of a year-end governing funding bill. And that extra infusion is set to advance with the help of senior Republicans, even as influential conservative groups urge a pause.”

That means Republicans predict enough Democrats and Republicans will support the package, drowning out loud voices on the right who don’t want to give Kyiv another penny.

“If we were on the other side of this, they’d be pounding the table saying, ‘Send more money to Ukraine,’” Sen. JIM RISCH (R-Idaho), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview.

Lawmakers from both parties believe the package will get through Congress before newly elected representatives and senators arrive in Washington.

SEND ARMED DRONES TO UKRAINE: Sixteen senators are urging the Biden administration to give Ukraine armed drones to better repel Russia’s invasion, our own LEE HUDSON reports.

The Biden administration has been hesitant to send the drone to Ukraine due to fears that sensitive technologies aboard the aircraft may end up in Russian hands. An electro-optical/infrared ball on the Gray Eagle provides real-time intelligence, targeting and tracking. The administration was also concerned that the drone and the instruments it carries would pose too many training and logistics challenges for the Ukrainian military.

But the bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Sens. JONI ERNST (R-Iowa) and JOE MANCHIN (D-W.V.), say the benefits of helping Ukraine take out Russian positions outweigh the risks.

“The MQ-1C could erode Russia’s long-range fires advantage. Most importantly, armed UAS could find and attack Russian warships in the Black Sea, breaking its coercive blockade and alleviate dual pressures on the Ukrainian economy and global food prices,” they wrote in the letter.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the letter.

Broadsides

FIRST IN NATSEC DAILY — CAMPAIGN AGAINST CHIPS IN 889: Loyal NatSec Daily readers will remember our report that two senators want to ban the federal government from acquiring products or services from Chinese chipmakers. Simply put, they want to update Section 889 in the federal code to include three Chinese firms and Chinese-made semiconductors.

Well, the backlash to that bill by Sens. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-N.Y.) and JOHN CORNYN (R-Texas) has begun.

“Left unaddressed, adding the covered semiconductors to part B of section 889 would harm federal agencies’ ability to procure the essential goods and services they need to promote our nation’s well-being, while putting added financial pressure on businesses that are operating in an inflationary economy,” reads a draft letter obtained by NatSec Daily. It’s signed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Aerospace Industries Association, among other groups.

The groups are fine with the section’s Part A, which deals with the procurement of items, even though “it presents federal contractors with costly and complex compliance burdens.” Their main gripe is with Part B because it bans interactions with a contractor that “uses” a banned technology. That makes compliance much harder, they argue. “A company with both federal and nonfederal customers would be barred from selling to the government because it ‘uses’ a coffee service that ‘uses’ the covered semiconductors,” the letter reads.

Some lawmakers in both parties told NatSec Daily they don’t fully support the Schumer-Cornyn bill because of Point B.

The draft note, dated Nov. 22, is addressed to Sens. JACK REED (D-R.I.) and JIM INHOFE (R-Okla.), the top members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Still, much of the non-government national security community is behind the chip ban out of fear China can manipulate the semiconductors for its own purposes. Some of the three companies up for a ban allegedly have ties to China’s military.

An AIA spokesperson said of the reason for sending the letter: “We have serious concerns about the cumulative effect of well-intentioned, but burdensome regulations that could drive small businesses out of the industrial base.”

Transitions

— MICHAEL HOCHMAN is now chief of staff for the White House Office of the National Cyber Director. He previously was deputy chief of staff and deputy general counsel.

— HADY AMR has been named a special representative for Palestinian affairs, the first time the State Department has had a D.C.-based post focused on that issue. He was previously the deputy assistant secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian affairs.

What to Read

— NATHALIE TOCCI, POLITICO: Europe’s Defense Efforts Remain Underwhelming

— BEN OLLERENSHAW and JULIAN SPENCER-CHURCHILL, Real Clear Defense: To Deter China, the U.S. Must Have the Political Courage to Retaliate Against Russia

— ANDREW KREPINEVICH, JR., Foreign Affairs: Is Putin a Rational Actor?

Wednesday Today

— The Hudson Institute, 10 a.m.: “Countering Russian Influence in Georgia”

Have a natsec-centric event coming up? Transitioning to a new defense-adjacent or foreign policy-focused gig? Shoot me an email at [email protected] to be featured in the next edition of the newsletter.

Thanks to our editor, Heidi Vogt, who has aligned the stars to gain full control of this newsletter.

And we thank our producer, Kierra Frazier, who is a star in her own right.



https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2022/11/22/u-s-and-russia-cant-stop-turkeys-new-syria-incursion-00070431

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 41: Israel ignores legally binding UNSC resolution, saying ‘it will not happen.’
Leila WarahNovember 16, 2023
Displaced Palestinians near Nasser Hospital and UNRWA schools in Khan Yunis, November 14, 2023. (Photo: © Mohammed Talatene/dpa via ZUMA Press APA Images)
Displaced Palestinians near Nasser Hospital and UNRWA schools in Khan Yunis, November 14, 2023. (Photo: © Mohammed Talatene/dpa via ZUMA Press APA Images)
Casualties

11,255 killed*, including 4,630 children, and 29,000 wounded in Gaza

196 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem

Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,200

*This figure covers the casualties from October 7 to November 14.

Key Developments

Israeli airstrikes have targeted the perimeter of the Ahli Arab Hospital on Thursday afternoon, reports Al Jazeera, who believes the attacks could be seen as an indicator of preparation to storm the hospital.
Israeli forces violently stormed Al-Shifa Hospital twice within 24 hours, destroying the inside of the medical complex despite finding no Palestinian fighters inside.
The UN Security Council passed a legally binding resolution calling for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses,” unrestricted aid delivery, including fuel and medical evacuations, and the release of captives inside Gaza; however, Israel says “it will not happen.”
UNOCHA: Those fleeing to the South using the Israeli force’s “so-called safe corridors” face arrest, and the UN has received reports of “beatings and people being stripped of their clothes by Israeli soldiers.”
According to a police statement, Israeli security forces killed three people who arrived in a “suspicious vehicle and opened fire towards our forces,” shooting and injuring four people at a checkpoint near Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank on Thursday morning, according to Israeli media.
Israeli forces have detained 69 Palestinians during overnight military raids on Palestinian homes across the occupied West Bank, including four siblings in Kufr Rai village near Jenin in an effort to force their brother to turn himself in, reported Wafa,
UNOCHA: The Palestinian Red Cross is no longer able to respond to the hundreds of calls from people seeking assistance in evacuating people wounded or trapped under the rubble.
As of November 10, about 2,700 people, including some 1,500 children, remain missing and presumed to be trapped or dead under the rubble, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza
The Red Cross and UNRWA are calling for the evacuation of the 650 patients trapped by the Israeli military in al-Shifa Hospital to other facilities, including in Egypt, as the patients are beyond the capability of Gaza’s already collapsed healthcare system, reports Al Jazeera.
On Wednesday, Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel warned that Gaza is expected to enter a communications blackout as the company’s data centers and equipment will shut down due to the lack of fuel.
At least seven staff members at the Jordanian field hospital in Gaza were injured at the ER entrance as they tried “to tend to Palestinians who themselves had been injured in Israeli air strikes,” said a spokesperson for the Jordanian army, adding that Jordan is investigating the incident and holds Israel responsible for the protection of their faculty and staff.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society has shared a distressing video showing Israeli forces targeting the organization’s paramedics as they shell the vicinity of Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza last Friday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, is publicly calling on the Prime Minister to resign because the public has lost trust in him.
Bombing, shooting, detaining, and strip searching Palestinains

Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, has been stormed twice by Israeli forces in the last 24 hours, even though they have only found civilians, including medical staff, patients, and displaced persons. Evidence of an alleged Hamas command center is also absent.

The first military incursion started at dawn on Wednesday before soldiers withdrew in the evening, maintaining their siege on the medical complex as “the smell of death wafts everywhere,” Al-Shifa Hospital director Muhammad Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera.

According to the Gaza government’s media office, Israeli forces expelled several children and patients, “depriving them of treatment and leaving them to face the threats of bombings, snipers and deadly drones” and even attacked several medical staff inside al-Shifa hospital during the incursion.

“They forced them to take off their clothes, insulted and cursed at them. They asked medical staff to leave their stations so they could interrogate them under the threat of weapons,” the office said.

Similarly, Wafa news reported that eyewitnesses saw Israeli forces forcing displaced people to strip naked and detaining and interrogating doctors, patients, and civilians.

The Palestinian news outlet added that Israeli forces were also seen installing facial recognition cameras and electronic gates in the courtyard of the medical complex.

As Israeli forces stormed Al Shifa hospital on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said on X, “There is no place in Gaza that we cannot reach.”

“We will arrive, we will eliminate Hamas, and we will return the hostages. These two goals are sacred…Yesterday, I spoke with President Biden again. We will be relentless. We will eliminate Hamas, achieve victory, and return the hostages,” he continued.

After finding little to no verifiable evidence of al-Shifa Hospital being used as the central operations headquarters for Hamas, Israeli forces launched a second raid on the hospital in the early hours of Thursday, less than 24 hours later.

Al Jazeera reported that the entire building had been damaged from the inside, stating that the Israeli military tore apart the walls and partitions between rooms and destroyed all the medical equipment.

Israeli bombardment has also caused “material damage to the specialized surgeries department at the hospital,” the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Telegram.

The World Health Organization described Israel’s assault on Al-Shifa hospital as “totally unacceptable.”

“Hospitals are not battlegrounds,” the statement said.

“Health workers have endured weeks of bombardment and siege and yet continue doing all they can to save lives. The international community must act now to end Israel’s systematic dismantling of Gaza’s health system and secure an immediate ceasefire,” Melanie Ward, the CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians, said in a statement.

“Apparently, no crime, no matter how grave, is enough for the international community, including the Security Council, to say to Israel: Stop,” said Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN observer.

“Calls for restraint are clearly not working,” he added. “The demands for respect of international law must be backed by immediate, serious, collective efforts to enforce the law.”

According to Al Jazeera, Israeli forces have complete control of the medical complex, and civilians are trapped inside the hospital and detained under Israeli custody. Israeli forces have taken some Palestinians to unknown locations, and their fate is still unknown.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for anybody to reach any of the medical staff, patients, and displaced people still stuck inside the hospital.

“I cannot even imagine … the panic among the patients, the panic among doctors and nurses. What they’re [going] through is really something that is unbelievable,” Tommaso Della Longa, spokesperson for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told Al Jazeera on Wednesday evening.

Longa added that hospitals being forced to shut down due to the lack of fuel, among other essentials, is “something that is not acceptable” as thousands of Palestinians trapped in the besieged enclave no longer have access to healthcare.

In a publicity stunt on Thursday, Israel gave UNRWA just over 23,000 liters of fuel to be used inside the Gaza Strip, which is about 9% of what the agency needs to provide support to Palestinians in the besieged enclave.

“Much more fuel is needed. We need 160,000 liters of fuel every day for basic humanitarian operations,” he said, calling on Israel to “immediately authorize the delivery of the needed amount of fuel as is required under international humanitarian law.”

Even worse, Commissioner General of UNRWA Philippe Lazzarini says Israeli Authorities “restricted the use of this fuel “only to transport the little aid coming via Egypt,” meaning it cannot be used in hospitals or for water purification.

“It is appalling that fuel continues to be used as a weapon of war,” he added in a statement on X.

Meanwhile, Israeli politicians continue pushing back on allowing basic humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave, collectively punishing the 2.3 million people living in Gaza because of the possibility that Hamas will use the fuel.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir declared that “Diesel = weapon,” on Wednesday.

Similarly, transportation Minister Miri Regev said that “fuel for UNRWA is fuel for Hamas.”

However, the UN reiterated that “Fuel underpins access to and provision of all humanitarian services in Gaza. Without it, access by the people of Gaza to life-saving humanitarian assistance will all but cease.”

“We are already seeing a cascading collapse in water, sewage, and sanitation services, telecoms, food shortages, and healthcare,” they added.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, highlighted that “Gaza is ‘occupied’ given Israel’s effective control, regardless of Hamas’ existence,” and that Israel “has a right to protect itself but not to wage war” on the Palestinian people who have been kept under Israel’s “belligerent occupation” since 1967.

Meanwhile, in the South of Gaza, the Israeli army is once again demanding Palestinians to evacuate “immediately,” this time from eastern Khan Younis, including Al-Qarara, Khuza’a, Bani Suhaila, and Abasan.

It is crucial to note that Israel has been gradually pushing Gaza’s inhabitants farther south, claiming it is for their safety, despite every area being as deadly as the other.

Notches were dropped from the sky asking people to go to “known shelters,” Yousef Hammash, who works with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), tweeted. “Can someone tell me where these known shelters are?” Hammash stated.

While most civilians have evacuated from Gaza City, those left in homes surrounding the al-Shifa hospital have been told by the Israeli military to leave, reported al Jazeera.

However, there have been reports of families being targeted by snipers if they try to evacuate and are not being afforded safe passage.

Questionable evidence

As Israel’s operation in the hospital expands, the military has been releasing unverified claims about what its forces found within the medical complex.

“The army is in the hospital and no one knows what they’re doing or what weapons they brought with them to claim they found them inside the complex,” the Palestinian foreign ministry said on Wednesday evening as Israel released videos claiming they have confirmed that Hamas used al-Shifa Hospital as an operational command center.

Similarly, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, questioned Israel’s “evidence.”

“It’s kind of baffling. Why would Hamas leave the guns and not anything else?” said Bishara.

The Israeli military “doesn’t have anything to show as justification for the genocide that they’ve carried out against Gaza and for the bombings of the hospitals and other facilities and for the collective punishments,” he added.

Hamas official Bassem Naim also told Al Jazeera the evidence presented by the army is “ridiculous” and “worthless.”

Israel has previously claimed to uncover a Hamas tunnel underneath another medical facility in Gaza, which Al Jazeera quickly debunked.

On Thursday, Israeli media reported the military taking down a video of Israeli spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus claiming to show proof of weapons being held inside al-Shifa Hospital.

While the army has not commented on the deleted post, online commentators have pointed out various consistencies in the images posted by the military with reports from Fox News, who had a correspondent with them during the raid.

The Israeli army later reposted the video with parts being blurred out, leading to even more public speculation on the authenticity of the clips.

Calls for Netanyahu to resign

As these military operations take place, captives are still being held in Gaza and subject to Israel’s ruthless bombardment of the area, which has led to an outcry among Israelis as Netanyahu puts off negotiations with Hamas.

While Qatar has reportedly continued mediating negotiation efforts for a deal between Hamas and Israel, nothing has been agreed upon.

“Israel is still delaying the release of 50 women and children from the captives in exchange for a humanitarian truce, the release of a number of women and children detainees in prisons, and the entry of relief aid to all areas in the Gaza Strip,” Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said on Telegram.

Israel is not serious about reaching an agreement “but is stalling to continue its aggression and war against defenseless civilians,” Izzat al-Risheq continued.

As Israel’s poorly woven narrative about Hamas unravels, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, is calling on the Prime Minister to resign because the public has lost trust in him.

“We need a government that can be trusted,” said Lapid, suggesting that his own party could form a government with Netanyahu’s Likud and other political parties.

The Times of Israel reported that Likud, Israel’s major right-wing political party, accused Lapid of “play[ing] politics in a time of war.”

Lapid said, “This government isn’t functioning, we need change, Netanyahu cannot continue to be prime minister, we cannot allow ourselves to conduct a prolonged [military] campaign with a prime minister that the public has no faith in,” reported Al Jazeera, commenting that this is a significant shift in Israeli politics and the first time the opposition has publicly called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign.

According to Israeli media, Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, believes that replacing the prime minister at this time is “nothing less than crazy.”

“I hear the voices saying this is not the time. We waited 40 days, there is no more time. What we need right now is a government that will deal with nothing but security and the economy. We cannot afford another election in the coming year,” Lapid continued.

UN Security Council Resolution passed: Israel does not care

On Wednesday evening, the UN Security Council finally passed a resolution after four failed attempts to respond to Israel’s war on Gaza.

Drafted by Malta, the resolution calling for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses,” unrestricted aid delivery, including fuel and medical evacuations, and the release of captives inside Gaza passed with 12 votes in favor and 0 against.

Three countries abstained from voting: Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The text also stressed the need to safeguard civilians, especially children, and called for “corridors throughout the Gaza Strip for a sufficient number of days,” yet it made no mention of a ceasefire.

Malta’s ambassador to the UN said the resolution “aims to ensure respite from the current nightmare in Gaza and give hope to the families of all victims.”

The fact that Washington “finally stopped paralyzing the Security Council on Israel and Palestine” demonstrates to Israel that “global concern, even among its allies, is strong,” said the UN director at Human Rights Watch, Louis Charbonneau.

In response, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, said the resolution is “disconnected from reality” and has “no meaning.”

Erdan said point blank, “It will not happen.”

“Israel will continue to act until Hamas is destroyed and the hostages are returned,” he continued, maintaining that Israel’s assault on Gaza is in keeping with international law despite the repudiation of several experts.

Although Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays says the resolution is “binding under international law,” there have been “many” other binding Security Council resolutions “that Israel does not comply with.”

“Israeli authorities, who have already lost their legitimacy in the conscience of humanity, will not be able to conceal the crimes they committed by bombing hospitals and killing women and children in front of the whole world,” the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

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November 15: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 40
[email protected] November 15, 2023 al-Shifa, evacuation, gaza hospitals, hamas, humanitarian aid, Israel, West Bank
November 15: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 40
Northern Gaza on Wednesday morning, November 15 (photo)
Hospital, humanitarian, evacuation, and hostage updates, West Bank deaths, US-Israel relationship, Jewish groups organize massive pro-Israel rally and more

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: 10,980* (10,784 in Gaza** (including at least 4,630 children and 3,130 women), and at least 196 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 2,650 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; 3,600 are missing (1,755 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” – 3 killed in West Bank, 51 in Gaza), including 32 Americans, and ~5,400 injured). The names of the 1,162 identified (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

Al Shifa hospital update: Israeli forces have raided al-Shifa Hospital, where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering, following days of heavy attacks in the area surrounding the complex in Gaza City. Israel’s military said early on Wednesday morning that it was carrying out an “operation against Hamas in a specified area” at al-Shifa. Calling the assault a “targeted operation” on Gaza’s largest medical facility, it said the raid was based on Israeli and United States intelligence.

Dozens of Israeli soldiers entered the facility while tanks were stationed in the yard of the medical complex. Dr Munir al-Bursh, the general director of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, said that Israeli forces searched the basement of al-Shifa and entered the surgical and emergency buildings within the complex.

Inside the specialized surgeries building, the Israeli commandos are tearing apart all the partitions, destroying all the walls between rooms, going to the basement, and calling out people one by one and interrogating them.

The soldiers are using loudspeakers ordering young men to surrender themselves. About 30 people taken outside were stripped of their clothes, blindfolded and surrounded by three tanks in the courtyard.

Israeli forces have blown up a warehouse of medicine and medical devices in the hospital.

Israel accuses Hamas, the group that governs Gaza, of using the hospital as a base. Hamas rejects the claim. Israel has not produced evidence to back up its assertion.

Israel’s attacks on al-Shifa started just hours after a White House spokesperson said – without providing any evidence – that Washington has “information” that Hamas is using Gaza hospitals.

RECOMMENDED READING: Don’t be fooled. Biden is fully signed up to ethnic cleansing in Gaza

Is Israel creating propaganda? “The Israeli army is the only party controlling the scene inside the al-Shifa Medical Complex, amid a total media blackout. No third party or international organization was permitted to be present inside, which raises doubts about any Israeli narrative that would be released later,” Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement, adding, “Israeli allegations about the use of the al-Shifa Medical Complex for military purposes do not require extended hours of searching and raiding. Therefore, there are concerns that the army might be creating the scene that might be released later.” (08:55 GMT)

Humanitarian update: UNRWA said it received around 23,000 liters of fuel from Egypt (half a tanker), though Israel has restricted its use to solely transporting aid from the Rafah crossing. “No fuel for water or hospitals. This is only 9 percent of what we need daily to sustain lifesaving activities,” said UNRWA director Thomas White. “Humanitarian aid must be delivered based upon need – not based upon conditions set by parties to a conflict.” This will be the first time since 7 October that fuel is allowed into Gaza.

Although 91 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered from Egypt on 14 November, the distribution of supplies to shelters, clinics and other beneficiaries has largely come to a halt due to lack of fuel. Watch for an update on whether deliveries are made today.

Evacuation update: On 14 November, for the twelfth consecutive day, the Israeli military opened a “corridor” along the main traffic artery between 9:00 and 16:00. OCHA’s monitoring team estimates that about 17,000-18,000 moved on 14 November, significantly less than in the previous days.

Numerous reports indicate that Israeli forces have been carrying out arrests among internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing; there are also allegations of beating, stripping and other forms of violence. On 14 November, IDPs have reported that the Israeli army had established an unstaffed checkpoint where people are directed from a distance to go through two containers, where a surveillance system is thought to be installed. People are reportedly ordered to show their IDs and undergo what appears to be a facial recognition scan.

Damage and destruction in Gaza: On 13 November, at about 23:00, Israeli airstrikes reportedly hit and destroyed 12 houses near the Jabalia services sports club (in the north), killing 31 Palestinians and injuring others. The following morning, at about 5:30, Israeli airstrikes reportedly hit two buildings in Khan Yunis (in the south), killing 13 Palestinians and injuring 20 others.

In Jabalia refugee camp, several children who went out to fill water bottles were killed by Israeli shelling. (08:35)

Israeli air raids on homes in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood over the past few days have killed at least 25 Palestinians, according to media reports. (07:55 GMT)

Israeli artillery shelling targeted flour silos in al-Qarara, which was the only storage place for flour in Gaza; work has stopped at Al Salam Mill in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, after Israeli artillery bombed the only operating wheat mill. (10:55 GMT)

Gaza’s two main telecommunications companies, Paltel and Jawwal, have warned of a “complete telecom blackout in the coming hours” in Gaza. “Main data centers and switches in the Gaza Strip are gradually shutting down due to fuel depletion,” the companies said in a joint statement.

Over the past 24 hours, internally displaced persons staying outside the overcrowded shelters in the south have been affected by intermittent rainfall and related flooding, which have damaged or destroyed tents and makeshifts where they lived. Alongside lower temperatures, this is exposing people to increasing risk of disease.

RECOMMENDED READING: Israel makes childhood in Gaza a living hell

West Bank news: Israeli forces killed at least 8 Palestinians during an hours-long raid on Tulkarem refugee camp in the West Bank on Tuesday. Wafa reported:

After 15 continuous hours of aggression by the Israeli occupation forces, people rushed to inspect what had happened in the camp. They were shocked by the extent of destruction caused intentionally to the streets, water, electricity and sewage lines, homes, and private and public commercial facilities.

A young Palestinian man, Yamen Kamel Atiq, from Jenin, has succumbed to serious wounds he suffered after Israeli soldiers shot him after the army invaded Jenin on October 29.

Occupation forces also shot Mohammad Abdul-Majid Halayqa, age 20 from the town of Shiokh. Israeli forces alleged that he had a knife. After shooting him multiple times, they left him bleeding on the ground and refused ambulances trying to reach him. The alleged knife was never found.

Israeli bulldozers also destroyed a monument to late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Tulkarem, in the West Bank. (06:51 GMT) Tulkarem is in “Area A,” officially under full Palestinian control. Israeli forces are not supposed to enter Area A.

RECOMMENDED READING: Israel settlers destroy drinking water network, trees in southern Hebron

Hostage update: Israel’s Kan television station reported that a “children for children” proposal is being examined by Israel and Hamas in advanced talks mediated by Qatar and the US. One of the sources said the talks were ongoing and no final agreement has been reached. (03:30 GMT)

The Hamas resistance group is currently holding about 240 prisoners, captured on October 7th for the purpose of a prisoner swap. Israel currently holds 7,000 Palestinians as political prisoners, at least 160 of them children) and has agreed to such a swap in the past.

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.

Israel news: In the last 24 hours, two Israeli soldiers were reportedly killed in Gaza, bringing the total number of soldiers killed since the start of ground operations to 51, according to official Israeli sources.

Netanyahu has slammed Canada’s Justin Trudeau for saying the killing of women and children “has to stop”.

The Knesset has passed a law granting honorary citizenship to non-Israelis killed by Hamas.

RECOMMENDED READING: What media reports fail to tell you about October 7

US ‘quietly’ ramping up weapons transfers to Israel: Citing an internal defense department list, Bloomberg reported that the Pentagon is “delivering on requests that include more laser-guided missiles for its Apache gunship fleet, as well as 155mm shells, night-vision devices, bunker-buster munitions and new army vehicles,” adding, “the arms are already being shipped or the Defense Department is working to make them available from stockpiles in the US and Europe.” (04:00 GMT)

WATCH: Joe Biden, career defender of Israel’s crimes and impunity

US-Israel tension: A new report by Bloomberg says the White House is getting increasingly frustrated with Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza as the civilian death toll mounts. Quoting several people familiar with conversations, the publication reported a widening rift between the close allies. It said US administration officials were having difficult conversations with their Israeli counterparts but their calls have been going unheeded.

At the same time, President Joe Biden’s administration is still fulfilling Israel’s weapons requests, and so far hasn’t threatened any consequences against Israel. (09:20 GMT)

Palestinian leader statement on US: By “accepting Israeli lies”, the US is “repeating the same mistake” it did in invading Iraq on the pretext of ridding the country of weapons of mass destruction, said Mustafa Barghouti, the general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. “It reminds us of the intelligence information that the United States had to justify attacking Iraq,” Barghouti said. [Israel partisans in the US government pushed this.]

Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations organize a “vast show of solidarity with Israel” rally in Washington DC. Schools, synagogues and community centers sent buses of attendees – tens of thousands of people converged on the Mall, including politicians such as Chuck Schumer and Mike Johnson, new speaker of the House.










https://israelpalestinenews.org/november-15-todays-news-on-palestine-israel-day-40/

November 14: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 39
[email protected] November 14, 2023 ethnic cleansing, gaza hospital, hamas, humanitarian, Israel, israeli weapons, Lebanon
November 14: Today’s news on Palestine & Israel – Day 39
Palestinians leave the northern part of the Gaza to flee the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip on November 08, 2023, under orders from Israel and amid bombing in both the north and the south. (photo)
Gaza humanitarian & hospital updates, Israeli assaults, magnitude of Israel’s bombing, war crimes, West Bank news, ethnic cleansing

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: 11,025* (10,829 in Gaza** (including at least 4,506 children and 3,027 women), and at least 196 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 27,490 in Gaza** and 2,625 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; 3,500 are missing (1,740 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” – 3 killed in West Bank, 49 in Gaza), including 32 Americans, and ~5,400 injured). The names of the 1,162 identified (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 update: A total of 115 trucks with humanitarian aid items crossed into Gaza on 13 November as of 18:00 hrs. This brings the number of trucks that have entered Gaza since 21 October to 1,096. Prior to the start of hostilities, an average of 500 truckloads entered Gaza every working day.

According to UNRWA, humanitarian operations at Rafah crossing are expected to cease by 14 November, due to the depletion of fuel to operate trucks and machinery to take supplies from the border and unload them in Gaza; if no additional fuel comes in, other supplies will not come in either.

Israeli authorities continue to ban the entry of fuel, which is desperately needed to operate electricity generators to run life-saving equipment.

People sheltering in tents at UN schools in Rafah, south Gaza, are now facing a new problem as rains have brought heavy flooding. One man at a UN shelter called for urgent intervention saying that people are already suffering from a lack of food, water, electricity and other necessities. “If our children do not die from war, they will die from the cold of winter and hunger,” he said. (09:35 GMT)

People who can no longer get out of their homes and those who need ambulances for the wounded often wait in vain, due to the lack of fuel for ambulances and intense fighting near hospitals. (09:20 GMT)

Gaza hospitals update: All but one of the hospitals in Gaza city and northern Gaza are reportedly out of service, as of 13 November, due to the lack of power, medical consumables, oxygen, food and water, compounded by bombardments and fighting in their vicinities. Al Ahli Hospital, in Gaza city, which currently accommodates over 500 patients, is reportedly the sole medical facility able to receive patients, amid increasing shortages and challenges.

No room for “newborns injured by bombings”: NICU nurse Warda al-Awawda says there has been a rising influx of newborns requiring intensive care amid Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the enclave. “We have received cases of newborns injured by bombings…There are children who survived but lost both of their parents…We do not have water to wash milk bottles for newborns or premature babies. The beds are full. On one occasion we received eight cases and we placed them in six incubators.” (07:20 GMT)

RECOMMENDED READING: Int’l medical community must call out Israel’s medical cruelty & war crimes

Hospital rejects allegations of hostages in basement: Israel’s military released footage of al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital – which its forces entered over the weekend – showing weapons it said were found inside. Images included rooms in the basement where it alleged Palestinian fighters are holding hostages. The video showed what appeared to be a hastily installed toilet and ventilation system.

The health ministry in Gaza rejected the allegations, saying the basement shown was part of the hospital and had been turned into a shelter for war-displaced people. “The hospital was forcefully evacuated at gunpoint … Why didn’t they detain any of the alleged resistance fighters or alleged hostages?” a ministry statement said, denying the facility had anything to do with a tunnel Israeli forces uncovered nearby.

Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for Gaza’s Health Ministry, said the hospital repeatedly invited international organizations to tour al-Shifa to confirm its neutrality but has not received a response.

Mass grave: Mohammad Abu Salmiya, director of Al Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, says 179 people have been buried in a “mass grave” in the complex. “We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,” he said, adding that seven babies and 29 intensive care patients are among those buried. (08:30 GMT)

No anesthesia: Gaza surgeon Fadel Naim says patients with injuries “up to the moderate level” are having to undergo surgery without anesthesia because of a lack of medical supplies. “[It’s] to preserve the remaining supply of anesthesia, which is on the verge of depletion at any moment, for major and critical surgeries. The pain experienced by the patients during the surgical interventions without anesthesia is beyond what humanity on this Earth can endure.”

RECOMMENDED READING: Out of medicines, care: Gaza’s cancer patients face death amid Israel war

Patient evacuation proposal: Palestinian authorities proposed a Red Cross-supervised evacuation of a hospital beset by fighting in Gaza on Tuesday, as health officials warned that the only way to save three dozen newborns trapped there would be to call a cease-fire and transport them out of the besieged territory.

The ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since the hospital’s emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday.

Hospital surrounded: After days of battles with Palestinian resistance fighters, Israeli forces have encircled Shifa Hospital, where hundreds of patients, medical staff and displaced people are trapped with dwindling supplies and without electricity to run incubators and other equipment.

The Red Cross tried Monday to evacuate some 6,000 people from another Gaza City hospital, Al-Quds, but said its convoy had to turn back because of shelling and fighting.

Update on Israeli military actions: Israel has carried out multiple airstrikes in southern Gaza, the so-called “safe zone” for people fleeing the north. There are reports of fatalities; the process of extracting the wounded from the rubble is slow, due to lack of fuel to run equipment. (09:25 GMT)

Drone attacks: A surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip, Ghassan Abu Sitta, says more than 20 people have sought treatment for “chest and neck” gunshot wounds in firing from Israeli quadcopter drones. “This is a low-flying sniper drone. When it comes to killing, they are so innovative,” he said on X. (12:10 GMT)

Southern Gaza: An Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis in southern Gaza has left at least 13 dead. Southern Gaza was designated a “safe zone” by Israel. (06:45 GMT)

Bombing reconstruction HQ: The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned the Israeli army’s bombing of the headquarters of the Qatar Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza.

RECOMMENDED READING: What media reports fail to tell you about October 7

“Equivalent to 2 nuclear bombs”: According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tonnes (27,500 tons) of explosives on the Gaza Strip since October 7 – equivalent to two nuclear bombs.

Israel’s use of internationally banned weapons in its attacks on the Gaza Strip has been documented, said Euro-Med Monitor, especially the use of cluster and phosphorus bombs, cause severe second- and third-degree burns.

The rights organization further stressed that Israel’s destructive and arbitrary attacks are in violation of international humanitarian law, and that killing civilians is considered a war crime in both international and non-international armed conflicts and may amount to a crime against humanity.

RECOMMENDED READING: Israel’s attacks on Gaza: The weapons and scale of destruction

Human Rights Watch: Investigate Israel for war crimes: A new HRW report declares:

The Israeli military’s repeated, apparently unlawful attacks on medical facilities, personnel, and transport are further destroying the Gaza Strip’s healthcare system and should be investigated as war crimes…

The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that at least 521 people, including 16 medical workers, have been killed in 137 “attacks on health care” in Gaza as of November 12. These attacks, alongside Israel’s decisions to cut off electricity and water and block humanitarian aid to Gaza, have severely impeded health care access…

“Israel’s repeated attacks damaging hospitals and harming healthcare workers, already hard hit by an unlawful blockade, have devastated Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure,” said A. Kayum Ahmed, special adviser on the right to health at Human Rights Watch.

West Bank news: Overnight in the Palestinian city of Tulkarem, Israeli special forces, snipers, bulldozers, and drones conducted a major raid in which at least 7 Palestinians were killed. (09:40 GMT)

Mass arrests continue across the West Bank, with at least 31 overnight – 2 of them children. To date, 2,570 people have been arrested since October 7. Israel’s detention campaigns have been accompanied by torture, intense beatings, threats and house vandalism, according to rights groups. (12:05 GMT)

20-year-old Muhammad Abd al-Majid al-Halayqa was shot and killed by Israeli forces near the town of Beit Ainun, located northeast of Hebron in the occupied West Bank after allegedly attempting to carry out a stabbing attack. (05:20 GMT) Israeli forces alleged that the young man had a knife. After shooting him multiple times, they left him bleeding on the ground and refused ambulances trying to reach him. The soldiers instead let him bleed to death on the ground. The alleged knife was never found.

Lebanon front: Washington is apparently concerned that Israel is trying to provoke Hezbollah in order to manufacture a pretext for a wider war in Lebanon in what has been described as a cynical move to embroil the US and the region in prolonged conflict. White House officials are said to be alarmed that Israeli strikes in Lebanon are aimed at goading Hezbollah into a response that justifies a full-scale Israeli assault.

RECOMMENDED READING: Phones ringing off the hooks for a ceasefire, but Congress members aren’t listening

Israel news: Israel’s military on Tuesday confirmed the death of a soldier held captive in Gaza after Hamas issued video of her alive followed by images of what the Palestinian faction said was her body after she was killed in an Israeli strike.

In the last 24 hours, two Israeli soldiers were reportedly killed in Gaza, bringing the total number of soldiers killed since the start of ground operations to 49, 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.

Ethnic cleansing recommended in Wall Street Journal: On Monday, lawmakers Danny Danon, former ambassador to the UN, and Ram Ben-Barak, former deputy director of the Mossad, published an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which they urged the “voluntary” immigration of Gazans to countries around the world:

The international community has a moral imperative—and an opportunity—to demonstrate compassion, help the people of Gaza move toward a more prosperous future and work together to achieve greater peace and stability in the Middle East…

We simply need a handful of the world’s nations to share the responsibility of hosting Gazan residents. Even if countries took in as few as 10,000 people each, it would help alleviate the crisis.

The authors went on to make baseless accusations against Hamas, and to criticize the UN for “doing nothing tangible to help Gaza’s residents,” but failed to acknowledge Israel’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid to enter the strip, or to stop the indiscriminate bombing of residential neighborhoods, infrastructure, UN facilities, hospitals, and other civilian sites.

Far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote in a Facebook post,

I welcome the initiative of members of Knesset Ram Ben-Barak and Danny Danon on the voluntary immigration of Gaza Arabs to the countries of the world. This is the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the entire region.

The reception of refugees by the countries of the world that really want their best interests, with the support and generous financial assistance of the international community, and within the state of Israel is the only solution that will bring to the end of the suffering and pain of Jews and Arabs alike.

Former executive director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth views Israel’s efforts in Gaza as ethnic cleansing. Many other leading organizations and individuals agree. Ethnic cleansing is a war crime.

RECOMMENDED READING: More Palestinians killed in past 34 days than in the past 22 years combined






https://israelpalestinenews.org/november-14-todays-news-on-palestine-israel-day-39/

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.

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https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/the-death-of-al-shifa-hospital-the-last-bastion-of-humanity-in-northern-gaza/

Occupation army bulldozers trample the body of a Palestinian civilian.
According to Euro-Med's investigations, a civilian was trying to cross the path that the Israeli occupation army announced had been allocated - the main Salah al-Din Road - for the displacement of Palestinian civilians from Gaza City and its north to the southern regions. However, he was killed with gunshots and then trampled on by a military vehicle for the purpose of mutilating his body.

The 'Hamas human shield' justification for Israeli war crimes
Zionist projection is the default Hasbara strategy

vanessa beeley

What separates Israel, the United States and other democracies when it comes to incredibly difficult situations like this is our respect for international law and, as appropriate, the laws of war. We do everything we can, in these situations, to avoid civilian casualties.

That is in direct contrast with Hamas which uses people as human shields. It [Hamas] actually seeks to put Palestinian civilians in situations where they could be harmed. This is very much part of the game plan. We know Israel will take all the precautions it can, just as we would, again that is what separates us from Hamas and terrorist groups that engage in the most heinous kind of activities

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken

If you actually listen to the clip of Blinken justifying Israeli brutality you will hear how he stumbles over his words. He knows he is lying in my opinion. The 4000 plus dead children, 10,328 dead civilians, 26000 injured and 2300 missing believed buried under the rubble of Israeli bombs does not substantiate Blinken’s claims of adherence to international law.

The Israeli bombing of humanitarian convoys, ambulances, paramedics, Civil Defence headquarters, journalists - 50 killed so far, hospitals, makeshift refugee centres, places of worship - mosques and churches, schools, UNWRA facilities, humanitarian aid supplies including essential bottled water supplies, sewage treatment plants, bridges, solar panels, electricity and internet, media buildings, fisherman’s boats, flour stores, burning of food crops - all these targets are in direct violation of any rule of war or human rights conventions.

The deliberate policy of starvation and the cutting off of water, food, fuel and electricity supplies is a genocidal policy:

According to Euro-Med Monitor, the Israeli war of starvation has taken very dangerous turns, including cutting off all food supplies to the Northern half and bombing and destroying factories, bakeries, food stores, water stations, and tanks throughout the entire enclave.

Soaring malnutrition cases especially among pregnant women and children. A Euromed report confirms that “women and children in Gaza are disproportionately suffering from the effects of Israel's war. Approximately 52,500 infants in Gaza are currently at risk of starvation, death, dehydration, and other health hazards due to overcrowding, in addition to 55,000 pregnant women, of whom 5,500 are expected to give birth this month.”

“According to Euro-Med Monitor, getting bread in the Gaza Strip has become an existential challenge, since Gaza’s sole mill there is still unable to grind wheat because of a shortage of fuel and electricity. Since October 7, 11 bakeries have been bombed and destroyed, while the ones that are still operating face tremendous difficulties due to fuel and flour shortages.”

Israel has been blatant about its genocidal policies. Blinken disappears the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from West Bank and Gaza in his statement. Israeli Heritage Minister, Amichai Eliyahu, has not only described the bombing of Gaza as “amazing”, he has recommended nuking Gaza and sending Palestinians to Ireland or the desert. According to a Times of Israel article:

Eliyahu also voices his objection during the interview to allowing any humanitarian aid into Gaza, saying “we wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid,” and charging that “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza.”

“They can go to Ireland or deserts, the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.”

He says the northern Strip has no right to exist, adding that anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag “shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth.”

Corpses rotting under rubble, shallow and hastily dug mass graves. Chemicals believed to be used by Israel in the bombing campaigns including White Phosphorous - all these factors spell disaster when the rains come.

Gaza is a strip of land the size of the Isle of Wight ( 40km X 12km) with a population of 2.2 million civilians. With the forced evacuation by Israel from the north to the south - you will have 2.2 million civilians living in an area half its original size.

Israel has destroyed Gaza’s ability to desalinate water to provide clean drinking water or to effectively pump sewage out of the strip. When the rains come, disease will be rife with sewage, decaying bodies, chemicals, disease flooding the enclave.

Even in so-called peace time children are used to wading through sewage to get to school. Children are forced to swim in raw sewage in the sea off the Gaza coast. This pollution will be exponentially increased by the latest Israeli aggression.

Added to this, the targeting of hospitals and health centers will result in chronic illness patients dying from lack of available treatment. Euromed - “more than 2,000 cancer patients, more than 1,000 patients in need of dialysis to survive, 50,000 cardiovascular patients, and over 60,000 diabetics—urgently need access to basic healthcare services considering the severe shortage of medications, medical supplies, fuel, food, and clean water.” These patients are not given priority because of the massive influx of emergency cases from the Israeli bombing raids. As Euromed Monitor reports:

Eighteen out of 35 hospitals in the Gaza Strip have stopped operating so far, according to local health officials there. Overall, 120 health institutions have been targeted, while more than 48 primary care centres (70%) are now out of service due to the ongoing Israeli raids and the fuel crisis.

The Hamas Human Shield trope

The claim that Hamas or as I prefer to call it, the Palestinian Resistance coalition, use Palestinian civilians as human shields is consistently used to justify the Israeli bombing of civilian targets as mentioned above. The bombing of an ambulance carrying wounded for evacuation at the Egyptian Rafah border was justified by the Israeli claim that Hamas fighters were on board. Claims that are never substantiated or investigated.

In my experience in both Gaza during Israeli aggression 2012 and in Syria on various frontlines - it is normal for the injured or civilian evacuees to be escorted for their safety by military, in Syria by the Syrian Arab Army. I do not know if this was the case in Gaza but it is a legitimate reason for military escort. The civilian bodies that were brought from the ambulance into hospital however contradict Israeli claims. Israel has, so far, failed to provide evidence of its claims that resulted in the deaths of civilians including children.

Gaza is a strip of land 40km by 12km. It is a densely populated enclave with buildings arranged in close proximity, schools, hospitals, residential areas all on top of each other. Israel claims that the Palestinian Resistance is using their own families, children and civilians as “human shields” while carpet bombing entire residential areas to allegedly wipe out ‘Hamas’.

The denials of Hamas using human shields

2014 - BBC’s Jeremy Bowen wrote for the New Statesman - ‘I saw no evidence of Hamas using Palestinians as human shields’. Bowen described his experience in Gaza:

I saw no evidence during my week in Gaza of Israel’s accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields. I saw men from Hamas on street corners, keeping an eye on what was happening. They were local people and everyone knew them, even the young boys.

Also in 2014 a Truthout article was published - ‘Congress utilizes myth of human shields to justify [Israeli] war crimes’

According to the report ‘no Gaza eyewitness found evidence of Hamas using human shields’ during the 2014 Israeli aggression against the Gaza strip which followed a similar pattern to the ongoing 2023 mass bombing of civilian infrastructure - a war crime in itself. From the report:

Human Rights Watch cited evidence of Israel “blatantly violating the laws of war designed to spare civilians,” including attacks on heavily-populated neighborhoods and shooting at fleeing civilians. Similarly, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem challenged its government’s claims that they had “no intention of harming civilians,” noting how after “weeks of lethal bombardments by Israel in the Gaza Strip which have killed hundreds of civilians and wiped out dozens of families, this claim has become meaningless.” United Nations officials in the Gaza Strip also charged Israeli forces with engaging in serious violations of international law, following a series of attacks against six UN schools where Palestinians were seeking refuge, and where no Hamas weaponry or fighters were present, killing 46 civilians.

None of the claims by the US State Department or individual Representatives that Hamas used civilians as human shields have been evidenced according to the Truthout report.

Again in 2014 the Belfast Telegraph correspondent, Kem Sengupta, based in Khan Younis, southern Gaza reported on the ‘myth of Hamas’ human shields’ - Gazans deny being put in the line of fire. Sengupta writes:

What used to be a three-storey house had been turned into debris sunk into a deep crater with twisted steel rods jutting out. Twenty-six people were killed in the mostly deadly air-strike so far in this bloody conflict. Twenty-four of them were from one family, the Abu Jamaa.

Around the same time that attack was taking place on Sunday evening, Benjamin Netanyahu was charging Hamas on TV with using “human shields” to gather “telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause”.

Amnesty International, following an extensive investigation after the 2014 war, found no evidence that “Palestinian civilians have been intentionally used by Hamas or Palestinian armed groups during the current hostilities to ‘shield’ specific locations or military personnel or equipment from Israeli attacks.”

In 2018 the Independent ran a headline - ‘Israeli army edits video of Palestinian medic its troops shot dead to misleadingly show she was 'human shield for Hamas'

The edited clip was condemned by Palestinians and rights activists as attempt to ‘justify’ 21-year-old Razan al-Najjar’s death - an IOF sniper shot her in the chest during protests on the Gaza-Israel border on 1st June 2018 as she attended to wounded and unarmed protestors also targeted by IOF snipers.

Israeli government and military officials tweeted out a video labelled ‘Hamas use of human shields must stop’ showing an excerpt of an interview with Al Najjar. The reality is that the young nurse does not mention Hamas and states clearly that she was there to save the wounded at the front lines.

“The IDF always accuses Palestinians and Israeli human rights orgs of editing documentation of it human rights abuses. But it edited this video of Razan al Najjar to discredit her after murdering her. Absolutely despicable and hypocritical,” Israeli-American writer Mairav Zonszein said on Twitter.

From personal experience, Hamas officials have always been very against civilians protesting at the border areas because of the high risk of injury and sniping by the IOF.

In 2013 I went with protestors to Beit Hanoun, north-east Gaza, to confront the IOF prison guards who encircle the Gaza strip with apartheid walls and barbed wire - converting the enclave into an open air concentration camp.

The automatic gun turrets that are found along the walls are set to fire at a varying distance. Israel changes the distance without ever informing Gazan farmers -so one day the safe distance is 4 meters, some days it is 6 meters - when farmers cross the red line, they are fired upon by the automatic machine gun turrets.

We stood on high ground next to the wall. We could see the IOF vehicles and guns trained on us. After about an hour of protests, Hamas cars arrived and asked us to leave the area for our own safety.

Razan Al Najjar was shot in the chest deliberately by the IOF. She presented no danger to the IOF. She was attending to the wounded during the Great March of Return that began in March 2018. The peaceful march demanded the end of the blockade on Gaza and the right to return for Palestinian refugees.

The IOF responded to these unarmed civilian demonstrations with the use of tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition. ‘Among the casualties of the first year are 227 UNRWA students who were injured and 13 who were killed.’

Watch this video - Great March of Return, a mother’s perspective:



6 months after the start of the Great March protests, Amnesty International reported:

According to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, since the start of the protests, over 150 Palestinians have been killed in the demonstrations. At least 10,000 others have been injured, including 1,849 children, 424 women, 115 paramedics and 115 journalists. Of those injured, 5,814 were hit by live ammunition. According to Israeli media, one soldier was moderately injured due to shrapnel from a grenade thrown by a Palestinian from inside Gaza and one Israeli soldier was killed by Palestinian sniper fire near the fence that separates Gaza and Israel outside of the context of the protests.

Legitimate calls for Israeli authorities to lift their 11-year illegal blockade on Gaza and to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their villages and towns have not been met.

The claim that Al Najjar was a Hamas human shield is a cynical ploy by the Zionist forces to provide justification for their targeting of unarmed civilians who have a legally justified cause to protest under international law. Those that so often call for Palestinians to protest peacefully should understand that there is no effective ‘peaceful’ protest against the IOF.

In 2021 Law4Palestine - ‘Under Scrutiny: Allegations of Use of Human Shields by Palestinian Armed Groups and the International Criminal Court Investigation’

What is certain, so far, is that the allegation that the armed groups are using human shields is unsubstantiated, and even the Prosecutor’s Office does not seem to have evidence on this regard, because the evidence at our disposal is the same as that which was available to the Prosecutor’s Office at this stage of the investigation.

Israel will try to defend itself – whether through the Court or through its political discourse – regarding the commission of war crimes by claiming that the PAGs are terrorist groups and that the war on Gaza was a war on terror where terrorists do not shy away from using civilians as human shields. However, it will face obstacles relating to the characteristics of the Palestinian situation in the Gaza strip and the possibilities of taking “all the possible limits of necessary measures and precautions” to protect civilians and spare them from military attacks.

Detailed investigations following the 2008-2009 and 2014 conflicts by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and others have failed to find a single documented case of any civilian deaths caused by Hamas using human shields.

Not one.

The following video by journalist Abby Martin demonstrates the hypocrisy of ‘human shield’ claims by Washington and Tel-Aviv:

Now let’s look at Israel’s proven use of Palestinian children and civilians as human shields

So not only is the Palestinian use of human shields a myth lacking any evidence, it is in fact Israel who is infamous for using human shields in its oppression of the Palestinians. Examples of this are incredibly easy to find even with the most rudimentary of research. Like much Israeli propaganda, it seeks to turn reality upside down and accuse the Palestinians of the crimes that Israel so often commits. This is a prime example of baseless dehumanization that many eagerly embrace because they have come to internalize a demonized image of Palestinians based on Israeli propaganda.

Decolonize Palestine

The evidence of Israel using Palestinians as human shields is voluminous, I will cite a number of cases and then offer links to additional reports.

May 2023 in Ramallah - a report by Defence for Children (DCI) claims that Israeli forces have used at least five Palestinian children as human shields so far this year, including two toddlers.

Israeli forces then threatened his sons Nidal, 9, and Karam, 11, in addition to his twin nephews, Ahmad and Mohammad, both two years old, and forced them to stand in front of Israeli military vehicles while Israeli forces fired tear gas canisters, stun grenades, and live ammunition at Palestinians confronting the group of soldiers.

Israeli special forces forced Anas to stand and walk in front of them for several minutes while handcuffed as they confronted two Palestinian men and fired live ammunition. Before killing the two Palestinian men, Israeli forces forced Anas to sit on the floor of a house next door, blindfolded.

“International law is explicit and absolutely prohibits the use of children as human shields by armed forces or armed groups," said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP. “Israeli forces intentionally putting a child in grave danger in order to shield themselves constitutes a war crime.”

While Israeli forces used the Shalloun family as human shields in Aqbat Jabr refugee camp, one soldier ordered mother Samia to put her two-year-old nephew Mohammad on the ground and raise her hands. Mohammad cried as an Israeli military dog approached him, and as Samia lowered her hands to move him away from the dog, the Israeli soldier put his gun to Mohammad’s head, saying, “Move again and I’ll shoot him.”

Since 2000, DCIP has documented at least 31 cases involving Palestinian children being used as human shields by the Israeli army. Last year, Israeli soldiers forced 16-year-old Ahed Mohammad Rida Mereb to stand in front of an Israeli military vehicle in Jenin as armed Palestinians fired heavily in their direction.

A 2013 report by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child describes a litany of abuses of children by the IOF and security forces including their use as human shields:

Almost all those using children as human shields and informants have remained unpunished and the soldiers convicted for having forced at gunpoint a nine-year-old child to search bags suspected of containing explosives only received a suspended sentence of three months and were demoted.

Further details of this case can be found in this Guardian report.

Two Israeli soldiers who used a nine-year-old Palestinian boy as a human shield were given suspended sentences and demoted after being convicted of "inappropriate conduct".

The unnamed soldiers, from the Givati Brigade, ordered Majeh Rabah, from the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood in Gaza City, to check bags for explosives in January 2009, towards the end of Israel's three-week offensive.

Also in the report from Human Rights Watch.

2014 - a report from ReliefWeb based on the original report by DCI Palestine:

Ramallah, August 21, 2014—Israeli soldiers repeatedly used Ahmad Abu Raida, 17, as a human shield for five days while he was held hostage during Israel’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Ahmad, from Khuza'a, near the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, was just 16 years old when he was taken from his family on July 23. He was forced at gunpoint to search for tunnels for five days, during which time he was interrogated, verbally and physically abused, and deprived of food and sleep. Ahmad told DCI-Palestine in a sworn testimony that Israeli soldiers attempted both to extract information from him regarding Hamas members, and recruit him as an informant, before releasing him on July 27.

"The Israeli military has consistently accused Hamas of using civilians - particularly children - as human shields, but this incident represents a clear case of their soldiers forcing a child to directly assist in military operations," said Rifat Kassis, executive director of DCI-Palestine. "Israeli officials make generalized accusations while Israeli soldiers engage in conduct that amounts to war crimes."

A report in Mondoweiss at the same time records accounts of Israeli forces using civilians as human shields:

Ayman Abu Toaimah, 32, a resident of Khuza’a recalls, “As Israeli invading troops advanced to the village they besieged it and used residents as human shields. When the Israeli army arrested people and then released some of them, they were told they are free to go back to the village, but as they were fleeing they came under fire and some of them shot dead. These people were used as human shields.”

Abu Saleem, 56, a resident of Khuza’a echoed Abu Toaimah, “Israelis claim that Hamas is using us as human shields– how? This is a lie, we do not see fighters in the streets. It’s them, the Israelis who used us as human shields in Khuza’a and Shuja’iyeh. They turned our houses into military posts, terrified residents in the houses. They attacked innocent civilians with their bombs, and missiles, they attacked chicken farms, they burned our crops, they have no mercy.”

May 2022 a Palestinian teenage girl was used by the IOF as a human shield during a military raid in Jenin:

According to DCIP, during a raid on the morning of May 13th, Israeli soldiers forced 16-year-old Ahed Mohammad Rida Mereb, to stand in front of an Israeli military vehicle for two hours as the vehicle came under fire from Palestinian gunmen, while Israeli soldiers sat inside the vehicle.

Breaking the Silence documents abuses of Palestinians by the IOF based on accounts from former IOF soldiers. A ‘moving human shield’ is one such report:

Apparently, that captain had gone to Takua, which is a pretty hostile village—they were throwing stones at the jeep. So he just stopped a Palestinian guy who was passing, forty-something years old, and tied him to the hood of the jeep, a guy just lying on the hood, and they drove into the village. No one threw any more rocks. A human shield. Yes. But not just a human shield—first of all, a human shield is bad enough—this was a moving human shield. Tied to the hood of the jeep and they drove with him tied there. Drove with him through the village, it’s horrific.


22nd April 2004, a 13 year old boy called Mohammed Said Essa Badwan/Badran was used as a human shield. Mohammed was peacefully taking part in spontaneous demonstration in Biddo against the building of the Annexation Wall. Around noon, following the launch of sound bombs and teargas canisters by the soldiers, some nearby youth started throwing stones. At this point, two Israeli Border Guards arrested Mohammed, beat him and forced him to sit on the hood of their jeep, tying his arm to the windshield screen and then using him as a human shield.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, who heads the organisation Rabbis for Human Rights, was present and tried to intervene for the release of the child but was instead arrested and beaten. Mohammed was reported to have been repeatedly hit by the soldiers while he was tied to the vehicle. Although he begged them to release him because he was scared and in pain, they would not. He also reportedly suffered from exposure to the teargas used by the soldiers, since he could not move nor was he given any protection. After about four hours, Mohammed was untied, forced into the jeep and taken first to Al-Sahl, an area in which the Annexation Wall is being constructed. He was then questioned by a military officer. Finally the child was released in the neighbouring village of Al-Kalaileh where he had to wait, alone and in the dark, for a relative to come and pick him up.

Ramallah June 4th 2013 - ‘Israeli soldiers proudly paraded the handcuffed teen up and down the street, making a public spectacle of him in the occupied West Bank town of Abu Dis.’

Armed with live ammunition, rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas, on Friday, April 19, at least 10 Israeli soldiers confronted the crowd of protesters using 17-year-old Muhammad Rabea as a human shield. They forced him to walk at gunpoint with his hands raised in the air as they approached the protesters.

Prior to being abused as a human shield, Muhammad had been savagely beaten by the IOF forces that had grabbed him from the streets. He was hit on the forehead with a rifle stock, kicked repeatedly on the legs, hit at the base of his neck by steel helmets. He was bundled in the back of the military jeep, verbally and physically abused, his hands tied by plastic cords. He was forced to sit in a revolving chair while IOF soldiers kicked him as the chair spun in the back of the jeep.

“One of the soldiers sprayed the keffiyeh (scarf) I was wearing with pepper spray before tying it tightly over my eyes, burning them,” he says. “Each time I coughed, he told me to shut up and kicked me. I wasn’t allowed to cough.”

At the military camp, soldiers forced him to stand facing a metal pole. Muhammad said the soldiers ripped his jacket and searched him, while an army dog clawed his back and calves. Following the search, soldiers knocked him down on the ground where he laid for two hours in pain as they continued to kick him in his legs, back and stomach. One of the soldiers removed the keffiyeh over his eyes and poured gasoline on it, burning it in front of him. The soldiers re-blindfolded him with a black piece of cloth and continued to hit him on the head with their helmets.

Btselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) 2017:

Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, Israeli security forces have repeatedly used Palestinians in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip as human shields, ordering them to perform military tasks that risked their lives. As part of this policy, soldiers have ordered Palestinian civilians to remove suspicious objects from roads, to tell people to come out of their homes so the military can arrest them, to stand in front of soldiers while the latter shoot from behind them, and more. The Palestinian civilians were chosen at random for these tasks, and could not refuse the demand placed on them by armed soldiers.

Using civilians to get wanted persons out of a house is known as “neighbor procedure.” This procedure does not differ significantly from other ways in which the military has used Palestinian civilian. It, too, too, constitutes illegal exploitation of civilians to perform military tasks and places them in real danger. This was made irrefutably clear in an incident that took place in 2002. On 14 August, soldiers sent Nidal Abu Mukhsan, a 19-year-old from the village of Tubas, to the home of Nasser Jarar, a Hamas activist, and ordered him to get Jarar out of the house. When Abu Mukhsan approached the house, Jarar, apparently thinking that the person knocking at the door was a soldier, shot and killed him.

2012 report from the Institute for Middle East Understanding:

In 2007, B'Tselem releases a report documenting 14 cases in which Israeli soldiers have used Palestinian civilians - including boys and girls as young as 11-years-old - as human shields to protect themselves in dangerous situations. In one case, a 14-year-old girl in Gaza is shot in the stomach and leg after soldiers used her as a human shield during an incursion.

In May 2011, two dozen former Israeli soldiers come forward to provide eyewitness accounts of the abuse of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military, including their use as human shields.

2021 - Human Rights Watch - A Threshold Crossed, Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.

When Palestinians Became Human Shields: Counterinsurgency, Racialization, and the Great Revolt (1936–1939) - Cambridge University Press

Using Palestinians as human shields began under the British Mandate in Palestine that ended in 1947. In frustration at the relative success of Palestinian rebels who rejected the influx of European Jews to dispossess Palestinians of their land, the British turned to the use of human shields to defuse Palestinian guerilla military campaigns from 1936-38.

The regularization of human shielding served as proof of “the dark path of repression” foreseen and warned against by the Peel Commission. Footnote125 It was also elemental to an ongoing process of colonial racialization that robbed the Palestinians of their humanity, stripped them of any figment of legal rights or protections, and denuded them of the most basic security of life. Indeed, with the systematic use of human shields, the colonial regime veered towards the “negation of all law” so feared by top civilian officials and took Palestinian society with it into the ensuing abyss.

Conclusions

US law requires Biden to impose sanctions on Hamas for using human shields.

The Hill

According to a report in The Hill, the “Sanctioning the Use of Civilians as Defenseless Shields Act” passed both houses of Congress unanimously in 2018. The Shields Act, as it is known, specifically requires the president to submit to Congress a list of persons he determines to be involved in the use of human shields.

Biden should move swiftly to impose the sanctions already required by his determination that Hamas is using human shields.

There is no evidence of Hamas using civilians as human shields - there is a plethora of evidence that Israel has historically exploited Palestinians as human shields putting the lives of children at risk on multiple occasions, torturing and traumatising them in the process. This is completely ignored by Washington. No sanctions on Israel?

It can be argued that Israel has deliberately put its own civilians in danger as human shields by facilitating settlement in contested zones beyond the green line - as for example in the case of the Kibbutz Be’eri when it is now proven that Israeli civilians were not only killed by the IOF gunfire during battles with Palestinian Resistance factions but were also shelled by Israeli tanks two days after the 7th October when the IOF took a decision to eliminate their own civilians alongside Resistance militants.

They [Israelis] are directly put in danger as a sacrifice to Israel’s expansionist colonial designs, which they can then blame on Palestinians to further accelerate this same project.

Decolonize Palestine

‘Israel justifies its violent attacks by continuously accusing Hamas of using human shields, desperately hoping to stir moral indignation while also trying to muster a legal defence for the indefensible.’

The subtext is that civilised people protect their children while Palestinians sacrifice them.

Under this pretext all Palestinians become legitimate targets and Israel can be exonerated of all blame. It is a criminal manipulation of reality to enable justification of genocide and the US and UK are upholding it - thus they are complicit in genocide.

The director of the New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber, resigned on Tuesday, writing:

“As a human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units. Across the land, Apartheid rules.

“This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations ‘to ensure respect’ for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities.”

See full letter, news report and interview from Wednesday morning with Mokhiber.


Journalist Sam Husseini wrote on X - I asked the State Dept on Tuesday about the recent DAWN MENA report documenting the Biden administration's efforts to pay for Israeli plans to "ethnically cleanse" Palestinians to Gaza. The spokesperson refused to comment on the funding request:

If you really want to understand Washington’s defence of Israeli war crimes and human rights abuses including a de facto genocide of the Palestinian people, you need look no further than this extraordinary admission by Robert F. Kennedy Jr:

Palestinian life is expendable if it ensures US unipolar supremacy. Heck, even the lives of Israelis are superfluous when faced with US protection of its global hegemony. If it is not yet clear that tropes such as “Hamas atrocities” and “Hamas human shields” are nothing more than fig leaves for US proxy war crimes in defence of US global military adventurism - then we are headed for a very ominous future.

Thank you for reading.

***

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The Presidential Advisor Who Introduced Epstein to Clinton Found Dead By Hanging With Gunshot Wound to Chest
By Vigilant Citizen June 14, 2022
leadmiddleton The Presidential Advisor Who Introduced Epstein to Clinton Found Dead By Hanging With Gunshot Wound to Chest
As you probably know, Jeffrey Epstein was a billionaire child trafficker whose 2019 arrest, incarceration, and highly anticipated trial threatened to expose the elite’s sick tendencies. The flight logs of his infamous Lolita Express (the private jet used to transport guests and victims to Epstein’s private island) is a who’s who of the global elite: Politicians, celebrities, scientists, financiers, members of royal families, etc. Dozens of prominent people embarked on the Lolita Express and possibly engaged in unspeakable acts with the young victims that were trafficked by Epstein throughout the years. Bill Clinton boarded that plane over 20 times.

But that long-awaited trial never took place. Epstein was found dead in his cell in mysterious circumstances. And, since then, several individuals who were close to Epstein also died in mysterious circumstances. For instance, in 2020, Hollywood producer Steve Bing (who was close with Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton) died after falling off the 27th floor of his apartment building. While the official cause of death is “suicide”, some claim that he was killed “Russian-mafia style” because he knew too much (read my article about him here).

Last February, Jean-Luc Brunel – the fashion agent who procured over 1,000 girls for Epstein – was found dead hanging in his jail cell. Again, the official cause of death was deemed suicide. Again, observers believe that he might have been killed because he knew too much.

And that list of bizarre deaths keeps growing. On May 7th, Bill Clinton’s former presidential advisor Mark Middleton was found dead in the most bizarre of circumstances.

Extension Cord

markmiddleton e1655210633404 The Presidential Advisor Who Introduced Epstein to Clinton Found Dead By Hanging With Gunshot Wound to Chest
Mark Middleton 0n the website of his HVAC company.
Mark Middleton was a former presidential advisor to Bill Clinton and the financial director of his presidential campaign. He is said to have introduced Clinton to Jeffrey Epstein as he personally invited the billionaire at least seven times to the White House. Middleton also boarded Epstein’s jet multiple times.

Despite Middleton’s great influence on the President, his career at the White House ended on a sour note.

“Middleton left the White House in February 1995 and was accused of setting himself up as an international deal-maker, exactly the kind of person that would appeal to Epstein.

In 1996 an investigation by the White House found that Middleton had abused his access to impress business clients and he was barred from the executive mansion without senior approval.”
– Daily Mail, Family of Bill Clinton advisor who admitted Jeffrey Epstein into White House seven times has blocked release of files detailing the death scene

On May 7th, 2022, Middleton died suddenly at age 59. He was found hanging from a tree with a cheap Dollar Store-type extension cord around his neck and a gunshot wound to his chest. According to authorities, Middleton trespassed on Heifer Ranch (which was located about 30 miles from his house) and used a table to construct makeshift gallows.

Perry County Sheriff Scott Montgomery told Daily Mail:

“I don’t know the man, and I don’t why he picked our county or picked that location to commit suicide. To our knowledge, he had never been there before, and we have no record of him being there before.

He died from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the chest. He found a tree and he pulled a table over there, and he got on that table, and he took an extension cord and put it around a limb, put it around his neck and he shot himself in the chest with a shotgun.

It was very evident that the shotgun worked because there was not a lot of blood or anything on the scene. You can tell the shotgun blast was on his chest, you can tell that because there is a hole in the chest and pellets came out the back of his back. It was definitely self-inflicted in our opinion.”

According to the sheriff, Middleton was “depressed”.

Despite lots of unanswered questions, the death was quickly determined to be a suicide. Furthermore, the sheriff stopped speaking with the press due to the fact that the Middleton family filed a lawsuit preventing the release of information regarding this case. The lawsuit states that the family has “a privacy interest in preventing any ‘photographs, videos, sketches (or) other illustrative content’ from the death scene being released”, claiming that this material would lead to “outlandish, hurtful, unsupported and offensive articles’ being published online”.

This lawsuit did not prevent people close to Middleton from voicing concerns. A business associate of Middleton is now calling for an independent investigation as he cannot believe that the man committed suicide. In an interview with RadarOnline, the associated stated:

“Everyone that I know here, that has worked with Mark, knows it is physically impossible for Mark to have killed himself.”

The associate also stated that Middleton dealt with companies close to the Clintons.

Middleton was actively engaged in financial investments with the same Little Rock characters who allegedly worked with John Glasgow, the chief financial officer of CDI Contractors Inc., the lead firm that constructed the Clinton library.

Glasgow vanished without a trace in 2008 after reporting financial irregularities with the Clinton library construction costs and his skeletal remains were found at Petit Jean State Park in 2015. His cause of death is undetermined.”
– Ibid.

While this story is already incredibly suspicious, it gets worse. A woman linked to Middleton was found dead in a river with a similar extension cord.

Ashley Haynes

2022 06 14 09 06 58 e1655212053877 The Presidential Advisor Who Introduced Epstein to Clinton Found Dead By Hanging With Gunshot Wound to Chest

Haynes was a mother of two from the Little Rock suburb of Maumelle. She vanished on January 12th, after leaving a note on her kitchen counter stating “on the water, love you all.”

After a massive search, her corpse was discovered four days later by a family friend … submerged in 10 feet of water. The police report stated:

“Mrs. Haynes had a bag strapped to her leg with a green extension cord. Inside the bag was a large concrete block that measured 16x16x4.”

Once again, people close to Haynes cannot believe this woman committed suicide in such a matter.

A source close to Haynes, who worked for a charitable group to feed and clothe the homeless, tells Radar the 110-pound former model turned yoga teacher, would have never taken her own life – let alone paddleboard down the river lugging a 58-pound concrete suicide block!

“It didn’t make any sense, she would never kill herself,” the Haynes source said. “When I heard she went missing I knew instantly it was foul play. I don’t believe she killed herself. How could she water paddle down the river with a concrete block!”
– Ibid.

Months prior, Haynes was seen in Mark Middleton’s office to discuss an urgent matter.

“I saw her in Mark’s office!” the business associate tells RadarOnline.com. “I was leaving and he (Middleton) was telling me that he had a very important financial meeting – and that’s the woman who came in!”

“I don’t know if there is anything connection there or not, but I know that it was shocking to me to hear she drowns while paddling in the Arkansas River,” the source said. “Then Mark mysteriously dies a few months later?”
– Ibid.

Just like Middleton, Haynes was said to be “depressed” and her death was determined to be “suicide” by investigators, even though neither of them left a suicide note.

In Conclusion

Weeks before the death of Jeffrey Epstein, I wrote that he might end up “suicided” because his trial could potentially expose some of the dark secrets of the global elite. Since then, several prominent people linked to Epstein and Clinton appear to have been “suicided” as well. When one analyzes the circumstances surrounding each death, a pattern emerges: No suicide note, no in-depth investigation, and little to no media coverage.

The death of Mark Middleton fits right into this pattern. The man who introduced Epstein to Clinton was found hanging with a gunshot wound to his chest … and it was quickly deemed a suicide. Furthermore, any kind of investigation relating to the case has been cut short.

Despite this fact, there’s one all-important detail that strongly hints at a non-suicide: The usage of a Dollar-store extension cord. Why would anyone who is adamant about committing suicide by hanging use a cheaply made, plastic extension cord instead of actual rope? Furthermore, why would a 100-pound woman use the same type of extension cord to attach her leg to a 58-pound concrete block? It simply does not add up.

If these two individuals were actually “suicided”, the extension cord becomes a code left by the perpetrators. First, this bizarre prop links both deaths in a rather unequivocal matter. Furthermore, the power cord itself might symbolize the reason why they were “suicided”. Maybe it’s because they were both too close to … power.

guns #biden #cent #someeofficial
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According to a watchdog group, the IRS may be competing to become a new branch of the military: since 2020 the bureau has spent ten million dollars on weapons, including rifles, shotguns and ballistic shields. Feel safer?