Golly gee, but that sure was bad propaganda move by Israel to striking the Gaza hospital--of course, Jew liars say Palestinians did it

[Apollonian]

World rages against Israeli massacre of civilians in Gaza hospital​

Wednesday, 18 October 2023 1:03 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 18 October 2023 8:49 PM ]

Link: https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2023/10/17/712928/World-reactions-Israel-strikes-Gaza-hospital/

An injured person is assisted at Shifa Hospital after Israeli airstrikes hit the nearby al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, October 17, 2023. (Photo by Reuters)
Authorities, groupings, and people across the world have expressed sheer outrage at the Israeli regime's massacre of hundreds of civilians in a single attack against a hospital in Gaza City.
On Tuesday, at least 500 civilians, mainly women and children, were killed by Israeli airstrikes on al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City amid a relentless war by the regime on the besieged Gaza Strip. The actual death toll could be far higher since, according to the territory's health ministry, "hundreds of victims are still under the rubble."

At least 500 killed in Israeli bombing on Gaza hospital: Health ministry
At least 500 civilians have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the besieged Gaza Strip.
The strikes came while thousands of civilians were seeking medical treatment and shelter at the hospital from incessant Israeli airstrikes. The war had already killed thousands of people, including hundreds of women and children.

Reacting to the atrocity, the Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas' Politburo Chief, Ismail Haniyeh said, "The hospital massacre confirms the enemy's brutality and the extent of its feeling of defeat."

The Lebanese resistance movement of Hezbollah called for a "day of rage" to condemn the strike, describing the Israeli strikes as a "massacre" and "brutal crime."
The Office of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denounced the atrocity as "one of the most heinous and bloodiest massacres against humanity in the modern era."
"The Syrian Arab Republic holds Western countries, especially the United States of America, responsible for this massacre and other massacres, as it is a partner of the Zionist entity in all organized killing operations against the Palestinian people," it added.
Saudi Arabia condemned the bloodletting "in the strongest terms," calling it a "heinous crime committed by the Israeli occupation forces."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, "I call on all humanity to take action to stop this unprecedented brutality in Gaza."
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued a statement, calling the slaughter a "clear violation of international law."
Moussa Faki Mahamat, the African Union's chief, called the strike a "war crime."
"There are no words to fully express our condemnation of Israel's bombing of a #Gaza hospital today, killing hundreds of people," Faki said on X, formerly known as Twitter, calling on the international community to act.

'Words fail me': UN human rights chief
The deadly strikes are "totally unacceptable," Volker Turk, the UN human rights chief, said, insisting that the perpetrators must be held to account.
"Words fail me. Tonight, hundreds of people were killed -- horrifically -- in a massive strike at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, including patients, healthcare workers and families that had been seeking refuge in and around the hospital. Once again the most vulnerable. This is totally unacceptable," Turk said in a statement.
The World Health Organization reminded that the attack had targeted the facility while it was "operational, with patients, health and caregivers, and internally displaced people sheltering there."
"The hospital was one of 20 in the north of the Gaza Strip facing evacuation orders from the Israeli military. The order for evacuation has been impossible to carry out given the current insecurity, critical condition of many patients, and lack of ambulances, staff, health system bed capacity, and alternative shelter for those displaced," the UN body said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of angry protesters gathered outside the French Embassy in Tunisia, following the Israeli airstrikes, shouting, "The French and Americans are allies of Zionists."
Protesters demanded the recall of both countries' ambassadors and shouted, "No American embassy on Tunisian territory."
French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday that "nothing can justify targeting civilians" and called for humanitarian access to Gaza "without delay".
"Nothing can justify a strike against a hospital. Nothing can justify targeting civilians. France condemns the attack on the Al-Ahli Arabi hospital in Gaza which caused so many Palestinian victims. We think of them," he wrote on X.
"Humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip must be opened without delay."
The United Arab Emirates strongly condemned "the Israeli attack that targeted al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the Gaza Strip resulting in the death and injury of hundreds of people," the official state news agency WAM reported early on Wednesday.
The Palestinian Authority's President Mahmoud Abbas said the attack amounted to a "hideous war massacre" that could not be tolerated, adding that any talks about anything else rather than stopping the war was unacceptable.
"Israel has crossed all red lines. ... We will not leave nor allow anyone to expel us from there," he added.

Palestinian United Nations Ambassador Riyad Mansour, standing with Arab UN envoys, said they were all outraged by the deadly strikes on the hospital and blamed Israel.
"We condemn this act in the strongest possible terms and we hold Israel responsible for this massacre, this crime, and those responsible for this crime should face justice," Mansour said.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said the strike was a "war crime" and said Washington was indirectly responsible.

"The horrific attack on a hospital in the Gaza Strip is clearly a war crime," Medvedev, who is deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, said on the Telegram messaging app.
"Who thoughtlessly distributes colossal amounts of money for weapons, loading up their military-industrial complex. Who falsely proclaims their global mission to protect democratic values. The USA."
Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar also strongly condemned "the Israeli attack on Al-Ahly Al-Mamadany Hospital in Gaza."
He called it "an indefensible act of inhumanity."
"International humanitarian law gives protection to hospitals and medical personnel. We demand an end to this indiscriminate targeting and urge the international community to act swiftly to stop the violence and hold those responsible accountable," he tweeted.

"It is a grave violation of international law and humanitarian law. Israel must be held accountable for its war crimes as it continues its unrelenting bombardment and siege of Gaza that has resulted in death, destruction and displacement," he said in the second post on X.
"The backers of Israeli occupation need to reconsider their policies which provide impunity to Israeli authorities in carrying out their campaign of terror against the people of Gaza."

 

[Apollonian]

Hamas’ Attack on Israel Is Puzzling: “Hamas Fighters entered Israel without Being Detected”. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts​

Why would Netanyahu enable Hamas to attack Israel by standing down Israel security?​

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research, October 17, 2023

Link: https://www.globalresearch.ca/hamas-attack-israel-puzzling/5836617/

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***
I am being asked about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, which seems to be taking attention away from the Ukraine-Russia conflict. People, by which I mean people who pay attention, are wondering why the Palestinians would attack Israel like this as it provides Netanyahu with an excuse to grab the remaining bits of Palestine and destroy the Gaza strip, thus disposing of the two-state solution by conquest. Who can blame Israel after Palestinians killed Israelis and took hostages?
I have heard the official explanation of Palestinian perfidy, but I don’t have an explanation for the attack. It seems it would have to be more than perfidy. I do agree with readers that it seems a curious thing for Hamas to do as it plays into Israel’s hands. I also agree that there is something else strange about the attack. How did drones and so many rockets, allegedly from Iran, and some say Ukraine, get into the Gaza strip, and how did the Hamas attackers get into Israel?
The Hamas attack has something of 9/11’s flavor. Just as every aspect of the US National Security State failed simultaneously on September 11, 2001, Israel’s security system, including the Iron Dome the US constructed for Israel, simultaneously failed.
Mysteriously, the Hamas fighters entered Israel on the ground and through the air and on the sea without being detected.
Mysteriously, large quantities of weapons entered Palestine through Israel without being detected.
This is too much convenient failure to be believable. It will be interesting to see if anyone in Israel is held accountable for the total security failure. In the US no one was held accountable for the security failures on September 11, which should have told us a lot.
Not knowing, we can but speculate. We have a motive. Israel can now steal the rest of Palestine.
Another motive might be that Israel can expand the conflict into a wider war and succeed this time in grabbing the water resources of southern Lebanon. It could even get nastier with Israeli moves against Syria and Iran.
Oil prices could go sky high causing world disruption. A victorious war and the end of the Palestinian problem would free Netanyahu from his legal and political problems. There is a lot to think about.
But let’s move on to the security failure that made the attack possible. Why would Netanyahu enable Hamas to attack Israel by standing down Israel security? It seems a nonsensical suggestion, but isn’t as it creates the conditions in which Israel can absorb all that remains of Palestine, just as 9/11 created the conditions for the neoconservatives to launch the wars they had planned in the Middle East.
The difficult question is why would the Palestinians bring on their own destruction by attacking Israel when Hamas has no prospect of defeating Israel?
Again, we can only speculate. It could be an Israeli operation from start to finish. Israel infiltrates Hamas, just as the FBI infiltrates Trump supporters and patriotic groups now called domestic terrorists.
The Israeli agents play up Israel’s abuse of the Palestinians.
Netanyahu helps them along by blowing up the sacred Mosque. The agents come up with an attack plan made possible with weapons from Iran and devices from Iran to jam Israeli security. They go about this carefully, relying on the decades of anger and hurt and the prospect of release from impotence to crowd out Hamas’ reason.
I don’t say these speculations suffice as the explanation. But I would not be surprised if these speculations, if investigated, would prove to be closer to the truth than whatever official narrative emerges.

 

[Apollonian]

Israel’s Rule Based World Order​

October 19, 2023 8:21 pm by CWR
by Chris Black

Link: https://citizenwatchreport.com/israels-rule-based-world-order/

Israel has now bombed Lebanon and Syria while massacring civilians in Gaza.
Are these nations not entitled to go to war with them?

How is trying to bomb the airport of a neighboring state self-defense?
Make no mistake: America is a vassal state of Israel.

Palestinians have no army, no navy, no air force and they live in an open air concentration camp controlled by a hostile nation.

See also China Just Fooled The World?!

It’s not an open air prison because they did nothing wrong to belong in prison.

Their only fault is that they exist, and that inconveniences Israel.
And Israel is trying to kill them all while the world is watching.
Western leaders helping these animals cover up what they did to those poor helpless children in the hospital are not being intellectually persuaded by the shitty forgeries and lies the Israeli information ministry and its Indian troll army are putting out.

See also If Israel, Hezbollah And The U.S. All Do What They Say They Will Do, Prepare For The Hot Phase Of World War III

They are just afraid that if they don’t do what they are told they will stop getting paid, go to jail or die.
Israel is a terrorist state, a mafia state, like little Benny Shapiro likes to say.
What’s happening now with Palestinians is how Zionism looks with the mask off.

 

[Apollonian]

'Second Nakba': Hundreds of Palestinians forcibly displaced by Israeli settlers in occupied West Bank

Link: https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-settlers-wage-second-nakba-occupied-west-bank/

[see vids at site link, above]

MENA
4 min read

Qassam Muaddi
West Bank
19 October, 2023

Palestinians in the West Bank warn of a second Nakba as Israeli settlers intensify attacks on Bedouin communities since the beginning of the Gaza escalation, last week.
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Hundreds of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been displaced by Israeli settlers since the launch of Israel's new war on Gaza last week. [Qassam Muaddi /TNA]

Israeli settlers have expelled at least two Palestinian Bedouin communities in the occupied West Bank since the new war on Gaza, which raises the number of Palestinian communities displaced by Israeli settlers since January to 10, the Palestinian Stop The Wall movement told The New Arab.

By Thursday, 19 October, around 40 Palestinian families in the community of Wadi Al-Siq, on the eastern slopes of the West Bank hills overlooking the Jordan Valley, were forced from their homes by Israeli settlers. Members of the community who took refuge in the neighbouring town of Taybeh told TNA on Saturday that Israeli settlers didn't give them time to take their belongings, as they forced them out.

In Taybeh, families have taken refuge in the town's surroundings after asking permission from the mayor. Families put up improvised tents provided by the local community between olive trees, barely enough to shelter the women and children. Some men have been sleeping on mattresses placed on the dirt at the foot of the trees.

Families of the displaced communities scattered between 4 villages in the east of Ramallah.
[Qassam Muaddi/TNA]
"At around 2:00 am, some 25 Israeli settlers, most of them armed with assault rifles, entered the community and began to shoot between the houses, calling on us to leave", Habes Kaabneh, a 47-year-old displaced Palestinian, told TNA.

"They entered our trailer-houses and tents and pushed families out violently", said Kaabneh. "Women and children ran in chaos, and some of them escaped down to the Valley and were lost for several hours."

Since the beginning of 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have displaced 10 Palestinian communities in the West Bank, according to local sources. [Qassam Muaddi /TNA]
"My grandfather was forced out of our lands in the Naqab in the 1948 Nakba, and this is a second Nakba; we are living again, 75 years on, under the eyes of the whole world", added Habes Kaabneh.

"A settler hit me with the back of the rifle on my shoulder and ordered me to leave, inside my tent and in front of my children," a woman of the displaced community, who asked not to be named, told TNA.

"I asked him to let me take my handbag, where I had my and my children's papers and my mobile home, but he didn't let me", said the woman.

"I ran with my children and other women and children of the community down to the bottom of Wadi Al-Siq Valley as the settlers followed us, and I took refuge in a cave for four hours until the settlers left", she said. "I then walked with my children more than a kilometre to reach the road, where my brother-in-law was in a car, looking for us", she detailed.

"I left all our clothes, our kitchen tools, our money and my children's books and toys, let alone my chicken and goats", she explained.
"All we ask is to let us return for some hours, just to take our things that the settlers are stealing", she added.

Displaced Palestinians in West Bank

Later on Tuesday, Israeli forces allowed Palestinians to return to the displaced community for two hours to take their remaining belongings.

Another member of the displaced community, 46-year-old Sliman Kaabneh, told TNA, "Some families who could save some of their livestock are now selling it to have cash, just to be able to sustain their families, now that we have nowhere to herd".

"A relative of mine had 200 goats, and it was all his capital and had them away from the community, which allowed him to save them", pointed out Kaabneh. "Now he only has 30 left because he has been selling them to provide for his family and guarantee a place to live", he said.

Last week, a video circulated on social media showed Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir distributing assault rifles to Israeli settlers in the West Bank. According to a report by the Knesset's security committee, revealed last week by Israeli media, there are an estimated 150,000 firearms in the hands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, expected to rise to 165,000 before the end of the year.

"Israeli settlers are taking advantage of the media attention being focused on Gaza to advance the Israeli settlement plans in the West Bank", Jamal Jumaa, coordinator of the Palestinian grassroots campaign against Israeli wall and settlements - Stop The Wall, told TNA.

Around 120 children of the Wad Al-Siq community are left without a school after being displaced. [Qassam Muaddi /TNA]
The plan clearly aims at clearing the eastern slopes of the West Bank of Palestinian communities, and that phase is practically completed", said Jumaa.

"This paves the way to settlement expansion along the eastern line of the West Bank and eventually isolates the Jordan Valley completely from the rest of the West Bank", he noted. "We expect settler violence to increase against Palestinian towns and villages in area 'b' adjacent to the Jordan Valley in coming months."

Since the beginning of Israel's new war on Gaza, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 60 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and 3,300 Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.

 

[Apollonian]

World Condemnation of Hamas Ignores Israel’s Criminal Treatment of Palestinians​

Given Israel's lie about Hamas beheadings, and its own reported murder of hostages, why are its claims of “a thousand civilian deaths” taken on faith?​

By Karin Brothers
Global Research, October 20, 2023

Link: https://www.globalresearch.ca/world...rael-criminal-treatment-palestinians/5836948/

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***
“I do not condemn Hamas because the resistance of the Palestinian people is a reflex response to their slow genocide…. The people I do condemn are the political class internationally who [support] “Israel’s right to self-defence”. A right they grant to the oppressor but deny to the oppressed. Those are the people who need to be condemned.” —Former UK ambassador Craig Murray “Now that I have your attention.”
“There’s no way Israel did not know of what’s coming… How come border crossings were wide open?” —Efrat Fenigson, former IDF intelligence Oct. 7, 2023
***
Israel has been a scofflaw state since its founding, and there are virtually no United Nations resolutions or articles of international law that it does not continually breach. The state was founded on the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians, and its knee has never been lifted from Palestinian necks. Israel has maintained a military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since 1967 and a humanitarian siege of Gaza, compared by many to the 2-year Warsaw Ghetto, since 2006. Israel has never stopped its ethnic cleansing or theft of Palestinian resources; its apartheid is enabled by viciously racist textbooks and the total erasure of Palestinians from its history.
It is no secret that many in Israel’s ultra right-wing government have been salivating for an opportunity to ethnically cleanse or otherwise eliminate Palestinians who refuse to be driven from their homeland, particularly those in occupied Gaza. There is evidence that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pretended to be blindsided by what was, in effect, a Hamas prison breakout of October 7th to turn it into an opportunity for genocide.
Hamas announced that the purpose of its incursion into Israel was to obtain hostages in order to exchange them for an estimated 1000 Palestinian prisoners[1]: political prisoners who are routinely tortured and leaders who have never been charged with any crime. The Hamas plan to kidnap Israeli civilians for a prisoner exchange was, in its intent, within its rights. Killing civilians would have been counterproductive, a war crime, and against its interests. But it could have been in Israel’s.
The world community, which annually ignores its contractual legal obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention to protect Palestinian human rights, has responded now with outrage at Israel’s claim of victimhood. While the world community has quietly allowed Israel total impunity for its ongoing crimes against Palestinians, it now responds to Israel’s self-serving outrage by condemning the Palestinian’s only legitimate leadership.
Hamas, elected by all Palestinians under occupation in 2006, has been regarded as incorruptible and dedicated to Palestinian rights. It has called for international law as the basis for peace, which Israel, hoping to illegally annex Palestinian territory, rejects.

Israel’s Efforts to Incite Hatred Against Hamas​

Israel’s reaction to the incursion was to immediately attempt to incite hatred against Hamas by falsely claiming that it had “beheaded 40 infants and toddlers”: a lie that was traced to the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu told this to U.S. President Biden, who announced it publicly; the lie was then “confirmed” twice by CNN’s Sarah Sidner. It has been confirmed to be a fabrication.
It is acknowledged that Israel was explicitly informed about the incursion at least three days before it occurred. With the world’s most sophisticated surveillance system, many believe that Israel had to have known about it far earlier, since the planning had reportedly been in the works for a couple of years. According to Max Blumenthal, Hamas had even created the model of a kibbutz for resistance fighters to practice in. [2]

Israel’s outrageous lie about Hamas “beheading babies” demonstrated its intent to incite hatred of Hamas; its foreknowledge of the incursion gave it an opportunity to ensure there would be enough “innocent civilian deaths” to “justify” a Palestinian genocide.
Israel’s Hannibal Directive allows the IDF to use heavy force when its soldiers are at risk of being taken as hostages, even at the risk of killing the soldiers. It is not difficult to imagine Israel extending this principle when the point of the Hamas incursion was to get hostages for prisoner exchanges.

Possible Evidence that Israel Ensured the Success of the Hamas Incursion​

According to former IDF intelligence officer Efrat Fenigson, “The border crossings were wide open.” [3]
Israel had reduced the number of battalions guarding the Gaza border from three to one before the incursion. [4]
The site of the Supernova music festival was chosen two days before the incursion to be at Re’im, about 3 miles from the Gaza border. [5]

Questions About the Music Festival Deaths: Did Israeli Facilitate the Toll? ​

Israel claims that Hamas fighters killed hundreds of innocent civilians: claims that have largely not been explained. Assuming that the accusations are legitimate, who were these people and how closely were they connected to the IDF bases and associated kibbuzim that ring Gaza’s border to facilitate their imprisonment? Israeli and Hamas definitions of “innocent civilian” might differ.
The most publicized Israeli claim is that Hamas killed 260 attendees at a music festival held near Gaza’s border. There is quite a bit of footage accessible on the Internet that was apparently taken at that event. The footage that I saw, however, shows no one being shot: it shows people running, cars burned out, drones overhead, and one guy shooting a gun in the air. It is apparent that there is a problem, but no proof of who was causing all “six hours” of it. The Mossad is known to have operatives who appear to be Palestinian, so someone who looks Palestinian may not be part of Palestinian resistance.
It is evident that Hamas did take hostages at the event, and that there was shooting. But given Israel’s eagerness to accuse Hamas of a crime it did not commit, its inflammatory accusation that Hamas killed hundreds of civilians needs to be verified:
Videos of attackers should have included voices; why were they muted?
Canadian/Israeli Shir Georgy died after messaging her father on Saturday morning that she was safe “in a room with a police officer”[6]; how did she die?
The attack on the music site lasted for 6 hours; [7] why were IDF not driven or flown in?
It took Israel 10 hours to get help to the music site; [8] what was Israel waiting for?
There were many burned out cars visible in videos; did Hamas fighters have the ability to destroy cars? Wouldn’t Hamas have wanted to make use of them?
Israeli police and security told escaping music attendees that the major roads were blocked so they had to drive eastward over open, cleared fields [9]; why were major roads out blocked to Israelis at that time?
Attackers threw grenades into the four underground bunkers where many were hiding; the Hamas men might have discovered the bunkers by following people, but it was not in their interest to kill those who were inaccessible or hiding.
A Hamas leader apologized for the civilian deaths that Israel claimed their operation had caused, noting that these were not supposed to have happened. [10] But could he have known whether they were responsible for the so-callled “innocent civilians” that Israel claimed? An Israeli witness reported that IDF killed both hostages as well as their captors. [11] Given Israel’s attempts to malign Hamas, there should be independent proof that Hamas fighters were responsible for the “innocent civilian” deaths they were accused of.

Implications for the Future​

Israel has made use of the anger it whipped up to wipe out entire neighborhoods of Gaza with massive bombing, and 400,000 Israeli soldiers are reportedly massed at Gaza’s border. It warned Gazans to flee, but there are no exits, and it bombed the “safe” route that it told Palestinans to take. [12]
According to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Israel’s two objectives in going into Gaza are to kill or capture Hamas government leaders, and to identify any Iranian weaponry, which, he claims, could cause Israel to attack Iran. [13] But Israel’s carpet bombing is genocidal rather than targeted. And would Israel allow any identification of Iranian arms to be independently verified? And would such a confirmation constitute legal grounds for an Israeli attack?
Will the world community continue to tolerate US-backed global chaos?
*
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Karin Brothers is a freelance writer. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes
1. Blumenthal, Max. Interview with Stephen Gardner. Oct. 13, 2023.

2: Blumenthal, Max, Mate, Aaron. “Zero hour in Gaza “. The Grayzone live. October 13, 2023.

3 Giraldi, Philip and Chossudovsky, Michel. Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “A False Flag”? They Let it Happen? Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”? Global Research. October 15, 2023. https://www.globalresearch.ca/is-th...objective-is-to-wipe-gaza-off-the-map/5835310
4 : Blumenthal, Max, Mate, Aaron. “Zero hour in Gaza “. The Grayzone live. October 13, 2023.

5, Ibid.
6. Chown, Marco. Israel-Hamas war: Canadian-Israeli Shir Georgy confirmed dead, family says. The Toronto Star. October 14, 2023. https://www.thestar.com/news/world/...cle_03c1999d-2349-53bc-9deb-4498f74a2429.html
7. Polglase, Katie. How Hamas trapped civilians at music festival. CNN.

8. Ibid.
9, Ibid.
10. Mercouris, Alexander. The Duran. October 14, 2023. Theduran.locals.com
11. Abunimah, Ali and Sheen, David. “Israeli Forces Shot Their Own Civilians, Kibbutz Survivor Says”. Global Research. October 17, 2023. Https://www.globalresearch.ca/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/5836630
12. Blumenthal, Max, Mate, Aaron. “Zero hour in Gaza “. The Grayzone live. October 13, 2023.

13. Polglase, Katie. How Hamas trapped civilians at music festival. CNN. Undated. Accessed Oct. 11.2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sScDHHNaHjI

 

[Apollonian]

Israel’s Culture of Deceit​

Link: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/israels-culture-of-deceit/

Israel, which always seeks to blame Palestinians for the atrocities it carries out, is the least trustworthy source about the bombing of the hospital in Gaza.​

CHRIS HEDGES
OCT 18, 2023




Liar Liar - by Mr. Fish

Israel was founded on lies. The lie that Palestinian land was largely unoccupied. The lie that 750,000 Palestinians fled their homes and villages during their ethnic cleansing by Zionist militias in 1948 because they were told to do so by Arab leaders. The lie that it was Arab armies that started the 1948 war that saw Israel seize 78 percent of historic Palestine. The lie that Israel faced annihilation in 1967, forcing it to invade and occupy the remaining 22 percent of Palestine, as well as land belonging to Egypt and Syria.
Israel is sustained by lies. The lie that Israel wants a just and equitable peace and will support a Palestinian state. The lie that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. The lie that Israel is an “outpost of Western civilization in a sea of barbarism.” The lie that Israel respects the rule of law and human rights.
Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians are always greeted with lies. I heard them. I recorded them. I published them in my stories for The New York Times when I was the paper’s Middle East Bureau Chief.
I covered war for two decades, including seven years in the Middle East. I learned quite a bit about the size and lethality of explosive devices. There is nothing in the arsenal of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) that could have replicated the massive explosive power of the missile that killed an estimated 500 civilians in the al-Ahli Arab Christian hospital in Gaza. Nothing. If Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad had these kinds of missiles, huge buildings in Israel would be rubble with hundreds of dead. They don’t.
The whistling sound, audible on the video moments before the explosion, appears to comes from the high velocity of a missile. This sound gives it away. No Palestinian rocket makes this noise. And then there is the speed of the missile. Palestinian rockets are slow and lumbering, clearly visible as they arch in the sky and then tumble in free fall towards their targets. They do not strike with precision or travel at close to supersonic speed. They are incapable of killing hundreds of people.
The Israeli military dropped “roof knocking” rockets with no warheads on the hospital in the days leading up to the Oct. 17 strike, the familiar warning given by Israel to evacuate buildings, according to al-Ahli hospital officials. Hospital officials also said they had received calls from Israel saying “we warned you to evacuate twice.” Israel has demanded that all hospitals in northern Gaza be evacuated.
Following the strike on the hospital, Hananya Naftali, a “digital aide” to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted on X, formerly Twitter: “Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza.” The post was quickly deleted.
Since the Oct. 7 incursion into Israel by Palestinian resistance fighters, which reportedly left some 1,300 Israelis dead, many of them civilians, and saw some 200 kidnapped as hostages and taken to Gaza, Israel has carried out 51 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza that have killed 15 healthcare workers and injured 27, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Out of 35 hospitals in Gaza, four are not functioning due to severe damage and targeting. Only eight of the 22 UNRWA primary healthcare centers are “partially functional,” the WHO says.
The brazenness of Israeli lies stunned those of us who reported from Gaza. It did not matter if we had seen the Israeli attack, including the shooting of unarmed Palestinians. It did not matter how many witnesses we interviewed. It did not matter what photographic and forensic evidence we obtained. Israel lied. Small lies. Big lies. Huge lies. These lies came reflexively and instantly from the Israeli military, Israeli politicians and Israeli media. They were amplified by Israel’s well-oiled propaganda machine and repeated with a cloying sincerity on international news outlets.
Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic regimes. It does not deform the truth, it inverts it. It paints a picture that is diametrically opposed to reality. Those of us who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel’s Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories — required under the rules of American journalism — although we know they are untrue.

Israel has invented an Orwellian lexicon. Children killed by Israelis become children caught in crossfire. The bombing of residential districts, with dozens of dead and wounded, becomes a surgical strike on a bomb-making factory. The destruction of Palestinian homes becomes the demolition of the homes of terrorists.
The Big Lie — Große Lüge — feeds the two reactions Israel seeks to elicit — racism among its supporters and terror among its victims. The Big Lies fosters the myth of a clash of civilizations, a war between democracy, decency and honor on one side and Islamic terrorism, barbarism and medievalism on the other.
George Orwell in his novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” called the Big Lie “doublethink”. Doublethink uses “logic against logic” and “repudiate morality while laying claim to it.” The Big Lie abolishes nuances, ambiguities and contradictions that can plague conscience. It is designed to create cognitive dissonance. It permits no gray zones. The world is black and white, good and evil, righteous and unrighteous. The Big Lie allows believers to take comfort — a comfort they are desperately seeking — in their own moral superiority even as they abrogate all morality. It feeds, what Edward Bernays called, the “logic-proof compartment of dogmatic adherence.” All effective propaganda, Bernays writes, targets and builds upon these irrational “psychological habits.”
Israeli supporters thirst for these lies. They do not want to know the truth. The truth would force them to examine their racism, self-delusion and complicity in oppression, murder and genocide.
Most importantly, the Big Lie sends an ominous message to the Palestinians. The Big Lie states that Israel will wage a campaign of mass terror and genocide and never take responsibility for its crimes. The Big Lie obliterates the truth. It obliterates the dignity of human thought and human action. It obliterates facts. It obliterates history. It obliterates comprehension. It obliterates hope. It reduces all communication to the language of violence. When oppressors speak to the oppressed exclusively through indiscriminate violence, the oppressed answer through indiscriminate violence.
The cartoonist Joe Sacco and I watched Israeli soldiers taunt and shoot small boys in the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza. We interviewed the boys and their parents afterwards in the hospital. In a few cases we attended their funerals. We had their names. We had the dates and locations of the shootings.
Israel’s response was to say that we were not in Gaza. We had made it up.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Defense Minister and Israeli Defense Force (IDF) spokesperson immediately blamed the killing of the Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022, on Palestinian gunmen. Israel disseminated footage of a Palestinian fighter they said shot and killed the journalist, who was wearing a flak jacket and helmet marked “PRESS.”
Benny Gantz, who was at the time Defense Minister, stated that “no [Israeli] gunfire was directed at the journalist,” and that the Israeli army had “seen footage of indiscriminate shooting by Palestinian terrorists”.
This lie was peddled until video footage examined by B’Tselem, The Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, identified the location of the Palestinian gunman depicted in the video. The video, the human rights organization found, was taken in a different location from where Shireen was killed.
When Israel is caught lying, as it was with the murder of Shireen, it promises an investigation. But these investigations are a sham. Impartial investigations into the hundreds of killings by soldiers and Jewish settlers of Palestinians are rarely carried out. Perpetrators are almost never brought to trial or held accountable. The pattern of Israeli obfuscation is predictable. So is the collusion of nearly all of the corporate media along with Republican and Democratic politicians. U.S. politicians decried the murder of Shireen and dutifully repeated the old mantra, calling for a “thorough investigation” by the army that carried out the crime.
A few months later, Israel admitted that there was a “high possibility” that an Israeli soldier killed the journalist by accident, but by then the eruption of street protests and rage over the killing of the journalist was over and her murder largely forgotten.
By the time the conclusive proof comes out about the bombing of the hospital, it too will be a distant memory.
There is dramatic footage captured in September 2000 at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip — where I saw a nineteen-year-old boy shot and killed by an Israeli sniper — by France 2 TV, of a father trying to shield his traumatized 12-year-old son, Muhammad al-Durrah, from Israeli gunfire that ultimately killed him.
The killing of the boy resulted in the typical propaganda campaign by Israel. Israeli officials spent years lying about the killing, first blaming the Palestinians for the shooting, later suggesting that the scene was faked, and finally insisting the boy was still alive.
When an Israeli soldier, in 2003, murdered the 23-year-old student and American activist Rachel Corrie, by crushing her to death with a bulldozer as she tried to prevent the illegal demolition of a Palestinian doctor’s home, the Israeli army said it was an accident for which Corrie was responsible.
The Israeli military has killed “at least” 20 journalists since 2001, with no accountability, according to a 2023 report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. “Immediately after a journalist is killed by security forces, Israeli officials often push out a counter narrative to media reporting,” the CPJ concluded. This includes blaming the deaths on “indiscriminate fire” by Palestinians or attempts to discredit those killed as “terrorists.”
Israel blocks the work of independent human rights organizations into atrocities and war crimes it commits in Gaza and the West Bank. It refuses to cooperate with the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes in the Occupied Territories. It does not cooperate with the U.N. Human Rights Council and prohibits the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, from entering the country. Israel revoked the work permit for Omar Shakir, the Director of Human Rights Watch (Israel and Palestine), in 2018 and expelled him. In May 2018, Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy published a report calling on the European Union and European states to halt their direct and indirect financial support and funding to Palestinian and international human rights organizations that “have ties to terror and promote boycotts against Israel.”
After the bombing of the hospital, Israel first released a video that purported to show Palestinian Islamic Jihad rockets which struck the hospital. The Israelis hastily removed the video when journalists noticed that time stamps showed the images were taken 40 minutes after the strike on the hospital.
Israeli propagandists — aware that Palestinian rockets have little explosive power — then claimed that Hamas stored munitions under the hospital. This caused the massive explosion, they said. But if this was true, it would mean there would be a secondary explosion. There was none. And now Israel has released what they say is a recording of two Hamas militants discussing the missile strike on the hospital. The militants ask each other, in a self-incriminating conversation that is too ridiculous to believe, if Hamas or PIJ carried out the strike. Please. How was Israel completely in the dark about an incursion by thousands of armed Palestinian militants from Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7 and able to capture this incriminating conversation by two supposed militants?
“Israel has a whole unit of ‘mistaravim’, Israeli Jewish undercover agents trained to pose as Palestinians and secretly operate among Palestinians,” the reporter Jonathan Cook writes. “Israel produced a highly popular TV series about such people in Gaza called Fauda. You have to be beyond credulous to think that Israel couldn’t, and wouldn’t, rig up a call like this to fool us, just as it regularly fools Palestinians in Gaza.”
Israel has also long targeted medical facilities, ambulances and medics, as Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein points out. It bombed a Palestinian children’s hospital during the 1982 war in Lebanon, killing 60 people. It also carried out missile strikes on clearly marked Lebanese ambulances during the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon. It damaged or destroyed 29 ambulances and almost half of Gaza’s health facilities, including 15 hospitals, during the 2008-2009 assault on Gaza known as Operation Cast Lead. It routinely prohibited wounded Palestinians from being picked up by ambulances during this operation, often leaving them to die. During Operation Protective Edge, the 51-day assault on Gaza in 2014, Israel destroyed or damaged 17 hospitals and 56 primary healthcare centers and damaged or destroyed 45 ambulances.
You can see my interview, released today, with Professor Finkelstein about Gaza and Israel here.
Amnesty International, which investigated the Israeli attacks on three of these hospitals in 2014, dismissed the “evidence” for the attacks offered by Israel as false. “The image tweeted by the Israeli military does not match satellite images of the al-Wafa hospital and appears to depict a different location,” the report read.
Expose Israeli lies and you are attacked by Israel and its supporters as an anti-Semite and apologist for terrorists. You are banished from mainstream media. You are denied forums to speak about the issue and, as has happened to me, disinvited from university events.
It is an old game, one I have played as a reporter many, many times. I bear the scars of the lies spewed out by Israel and its lobby. Meanwhile, Israel continues its butchery, endorsed and even lauded by Western political leaders, including Joe Biden, who accompany the torrent of lies from Israel like a Wagnerian chorus.

 

[Apollonian]

Kikes are great liars, for sure, BUT there's problem when they're exposed so soon--doesn't look so good for them, eh?