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Once upon a time this would have resulted in sanctions and military action against the aggressor. Now it’s presented in the media as just another story… Israeli drones bomb humanitarian aid ships near Malta. I haven’t watched or read the proceedings at the ICC this week – anyone have a brief synopsis?
Jack mentioned the documentary film Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People in a post yesterday (which I must confess I’ve never heard of before), so I just did a search to see if it’s on youtube, and it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPxak6lFd-I (51 minutes)
Shibboleth
Or to put it another way, if it had been Russia/Putin doing the same… Anyway, we should never-ever forget the USS Liberty, which sums it all up really.
I don’t know if this is being reported by the MSM, but I just came across it in a Times of Israel article posted yesterday. Here’s the headline and the sub-headline and a few clips from it:
UN, aid groups hit out at Israeli plans for resuming Gaza aid distribution
Humanitarian workers claim it would be ‘terrifying’ to work directly with IDF to disperse aid, as Israel considers enlisting private security contractors to hand out food to Gazans
Israel has blocked aid from entering Gaza for two months and says it won’t allow food, fuel, water, or medicine into the besieged territory until it puts in place a system giving it control over the distribution.
But officials from the UN and aid groups say the proposals that Israel has floated are untenable. These officials say they would allow military and political objectives to impede humanitarian goals, put restrictions on who is eligible to give and receive aid, and could force large numbers of Palestinians to move, which would violate international law.
Israel has not detailed any of its proposals publicly or put them down in writing. But aid groups have been documenting their conversations with Israeli officials, and The Associated Press obtained more than 40 pages of notes summarizing Israel’s proposals and aid groups’ concerns about them.
On Friday, The Times of Israel reported that the IDF plans to transition away from wholesale distribution and warehousing of aid and to instead have international organizations and private security contractors hand out boxes of food to individual Gazan families, according to Israeli and Arab officials familiar with the matter.
The IDF will not be directly involved in the distribution of aid, but troops will be tasked with providing an outer layer of security for the private contractors and international organizations handing out the assistance, the officials said….
Aid groups say Israel shouldn’t have any direct role in distributing aid once it arrives in Gaza, and most are saying they will refuse to be part of any such system.
“Israel has the responsibility to facilitate our work, not weaponize it,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN agency that oversees the coordination of aid to Gaza….
Israel says it must take control of aid distribution, arguing without providing evidence that Hamas and other terrorists siphon off supplies. Aid workers deny there is a significant diversion of aid to terrorists, saying the UN strictly monitors distribution.
One of Israel’s core proposals is a more centralized system — made up of five food distribution hubs — that would give it greater oversight, aid groups say….
Given Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people, global standards for humanitarian aid would typically suggest setting up about 100 distribution sites — or 20 times as many as Israel is currently proposing — aid groups said….
Experts say Israel is concerned that if Hamas seizes aid, it will then make the population dependent on the terror group to access critical food supplies. It could use income from selling the aid to recruit more fighters, said Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at two Israeli think tanks, the Institute for National Security Studies and the Misgav Institute….
Aid groups are trying to stay united on a range of issues, including not allowing Israel to vet staff or people receiving aid. But they say they’re being backed into a corner.
“For us to work directly with the military in the delivery of aid is terrifying,” said Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam’s policy lead for Israel and the Palestinian territories. “That should worry every single Palestinian in Gaza, but also every humanitarian worker.”
The following Times of Israel article from February 27th this year was linked to in a ToI article posted today. It’s by far the most detailed article I’ve read about the excuses put forward by the IDF for it’s failures on October 7th. And for starters, there is no way that there were 5,600 Hamas fighters et al who invaded Israel on Oct 7th, and the number is being massively exaggerated for the obvious reason (the figure of 5,600 is cited in the ToI article posted today, and not in the Feb 27th article, which doesn’t mention a figure). Anyway, I just did a search to see if I could determine how many Hamas themselves have said were involved in the attack, and couldn’t find anything (which I only spent ten minutes or so trying to find before I gave up), but, I definitely read something six, seven, eight months ago in which Hamas say exactly how many were involved, and I’m absolutely certain is was one thousand and something – ie 1,500, or something like that – and why the feck would Hamas lie about it. Whereas the IDF/Israel… well they just lie through their teeth about every single thing of course.
Anyhow, in the process of doing a search to see if I could find the number of hamas fighters et al who were involved in the attack, I came across a wikipedia entry entitled ‘October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel’ (which I’ve referred to and cited before in respect of the intelligence failures), and it says the following in the second paragraph:
Hamas militants breached the Gaza–Israel barrier, attacking military bases and massacring civilians in 21 communities, including Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Netiv Haasara, and Alumim. According to an IDF report that revised the estimate on the number of attackers, 6,000 Gazans breached the border in 119 locations into Israel, including 3,800 from the elite “Nukhba forces” and 2,200 civilians and other militants.
Yes, and it references a ToI article from August 31st, 2024, the headline of which elaborates:
Doubling previous numbers, report says 6,000 Gazans – including 3,800 trained Hamas terrorists – broke into Israel on Oct. 7
Twice as many Gazans breached the border into Israel on October 7 than previously reported, Channel 12 says, citing data compiled by the IDF’s Gaza Division.
The report says some 3,800 trained and armed Hamas terrorists smashed through the border fence, among a total of 6,000 Gazans who crossed into Israel that day.
Hitherto, figures made public indicated that some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists participated in the invasion, massacre and hostage-taking that day.
The TV report also says that the border was breached in 119 places — again, about double the hitherto widely cited figure of 60 breaches in the Gaza-Israel fence.
And would you believe it, the number of breaches in the border fence ALSO doubled. Well, well, well, fancy that.
I think we can all be pretty certain that even the first figure probably exaggerated the numbers (I mean first it was 3,000, and then eleven months later it doubled to 6,000, and now – as in the ToI artcle posted today – it’s 5,600).
Anyway, all I really wanted to say regards the IDFs explanations for their failure on Oct 7th, is think Egypt (and the border spotters etc, etc, etc). Here’s the Feb 27th article:
IDF identified but ignored 5 warning signs of Hamas attack on eve of Oct. 7, its probe shows
Before 4 a.m., Southern Command chief spoke with senior intelligence officers and Shin Bet officials about unusual activity, but they all determined no attack was imminent
PS And just in case anyone’s interested, this was the ToI article posted today that I referred to:
In a comment in Craig’s current article, Alyson started by saying that ‘Commenters on ToI were very keen that Greta Thunberg should have perished in the attack’, referring of course to the attack on the Gaza aid ship, and so I then posted the following:
Thought I’d just check the comments on the ToI that Alyson referred to, but when I did a search on the ToIs website re >flotilla gaza< about eight articles came up, and I don’t know which one Alyson was specifically referring to. So anyway, I clicked on one of them, and apparently just shortly before the drone attack (as it says in the sub-heading of one of the ToI articles, posted yesterday):
Activists with pro-Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition say Palau revoked its flag from Conscience shortly before alleged Israeli attack on reportedly Hamas-affiliated vessel
And in another ToI article, this one posted today, it says the following:
An international organization accused Malta on Sunday of impeding access to a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid ship that it says was bombed by two drones two days before, and Malta denied the claim, saying the crew had refused assistance.
What! All I’ve been reading about the episode during the past couple of days is that Malta has been refusing to help and assist in any way whatsoever, and if that’s the case, then ‘Malta’ is lying. Perhaps they’re all zionists, for whom lying is just second nature. I mean it’s inconceivable that in such circumstances the crew of the ship would refuse assistance.
And another aspect of it all – which I must confess I don’t have the foggiest about – is that because Palau revoked its flag, Malta, Greece, and Turkey are threatening to seize Gaza activists’ drone-hit ship if it docks. WTF is THAT about! Just totally unbelievable.
I should explain that I actually brought up first one of the ToI articles, and then another, and I’m totally confused about which bit I read in which one, and which bit I read in the other, BUT, I’m ruddy well sure that in one or the other of them – and it said it at least twice – the ship was being referred to as a Hamas-affiliated ship, but I’ve just searched right through both of them looking for the passages, and I can’t see them in either, and that has done my head in somewhat. Is it possible that in the five/ten minutes or so after reading that (in one of the articles), that the ToI just happened to delete that bit. I can’t face reading through them again, but that claim/accusation was definitely made in one of the articles, because apart from anything else, it seemed like such a totally ridiculous claim to make, and of course sounded exactly like the sort of shit that BN and his fascist buddies would concoct and start spouting to the media.
Anyway, here’s a link to one of the articles (the one from yesterday, the 3rd):
Malta, Greece, Turkey said threatening to seize Gaza activists’ drone-hit ship if it docks
And here’s the one from today (the 4th, although it’s now become the 5th whilst I’ve been putting this post together):
Gaza flotilla organization accuses Malta of barring activists from drone-hit ship
NB Actually, it does say in one of the articles that Malta is pretty sympathetic to the Palestinians… but then why are they acting the way they are.
___________________And then shortly afterwards I posted the following comment, which is self-explanatory:
JfC, the first thing I did after posting my comment above is go on to Skwakbox to see if they’ve posted any updates about the episode with the Conscience, and they have, earlier today (well, yesterday now), and here’s some of what it says, and the headline:
Video: Thunberg condemns Israeli bombing of aid vessel – as Malta navy blocks help reaching it
Ship was attacked hours before campaigner was due to join it – now Maltese warship will not allow support vessel to reach it in international waters or allow it to reach port
Environmental and anti-genocide campaigner Greta Thunberg has condemned Israel’s drone-bombing of the Gaza-bound ‘Freedom Flotilla’ aid ship Conscience that left the vessel burning and holed at the water line – while the Maltese navy, which refused to rescue the crew or allow them to reach Malta for repairs, blocks the ship’s support team from reaching it to help their thirty humanitarian colleagues on board…
What on earth is going on fffs!
PS I thought I’d post them both on here so they’re easier to find – in the coming months if need be – for reference purposes.
As you would imagine, there is reams of stuff on the ADLs website (which I’ve never been on before), but I came across the following on there (under the heading Campus Antisemitism Report Card):
Less than half of Jewish students reported feeling physically safe on their campuses during the fall semester of the 2023-2024 school year. The surge in protests has intensified anti-Jewish hate, leaving many Jewish students and falculties feeling threatened. While some school administrations….
https://www.adl.org/ (it’s about 2/3s of the way down the page)
I find this very hard to believe – ie that less than half reported feeling physically safe (which of course implies that MORE than half DON’T feel physically safe). It’s complete and utter nonsense. In the first place there are of course Jewish students involved in the campus protests, and have been since they first started, and antisemites don’t differentiate between Jews, and have a dislike of all Jews. And in the second place – to state the glaringly obvious – does it seem remotely likely or plausible that people protesting against the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza, and calling for the war on Gaza to stop, would be people who could be perceived as a threat to Jewish students and, as such, capable of physical violence against them. No, of course not, and it’s dispicable garbage lies. They’re empaths, and depise violence of course. And thirdly, has there been even ONE case of a protester, or protesters, physically harming or attacking a Jewish student. No, there hasn’t!
The ADL is spouting abhorrent and malicious propaganda lies so as to discredit the campus protesters, and deliberately trying to paint them as not only a threat to Jewish students, but also accusing them of being responsible – ie to blame – for an intensification in Jewish hate. And how totally TOTALLY evil is that!
NB Just did a search to see if the ADL is a charity, and this is what came up:
Yes, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which means it is a charity….Oh, right, just like that other zionist propaganda outfit, the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism.
Needless to say, only hard-core fascists try to discredit and smear and demonise people.
And, on the other hand, what legitimate orgainisation on this planet that campaigns against A/S defends nazi scum and tries to dupe people:
After Elon Musk made an apparent Nazi salute at an inauguration rally for United States President Donald Trump, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) rushed to defend the SpaceX founder.
The self-described anti-Semitism watchdog and “leading anti-hate organization in the world” dismissed Musk’s raised arm as “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm” in a social media post on Monday.
Birds of a feather…
Thanks for these Alan – will have a read in the next few days.
Allan Howard
And another aspect of it all – which I must confess I don’t have the foggiest about – is that because Palau revoked its flag, Malta, Greece, and Turkey are threatening to seize Gaza activists’ drone-hit ship if it docks. WTF is THAT about! Just totally unbelievable.
Yes I can only agree, the appeasement by the west is simply unphantomable. I mean we have regular folks, civilans, trying to deliver humanitarian food/assistance to a people under harsh illegal blockade according to every human rights organisation there is and this flotilla is attacked – on european waters/soil – by a non-european regime – and there is no reaction!? What the H is going on?!
Two months of cruel and inhumane siege are further evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent in Gaza
Could you imagine the uproar by the same europe/EU if Russia breached into EU airspace and attacked with drones (or whatever tactic Israel used) and attacked a humanitarian civilian ship trying to carry aid to Ukraine!? It would be considered an act of war aginst the whole of the EU!
I just shake my head. To be h honest, what a disgusting pack of people that rule the EU, not even when Israel put cviilian europeans in harm’s way they will open their mouth.
There is no doubt whatsoever that Netanyahu and his fascist buddies (including Biden and Blinken et al) knew well in advance of October 7th that Hamas were planning and training for a substantial attack and, as such, let it go ahead. They are a bunch of megalomaniacs who don’t give a shit about the Israeli population except in so far as they can use them and exploit them and manipulate them, and as far as the number of people who would be killed in such an attack, whether civilians or IDF, for these deranged psychopaths it was a case of the more the merrier. Anyway, one would have thought it was worthy of a documentary, but at least BBC News posted it on their website:
They were Israel’s ‘eyes on the border’ – but their Hamas warnings went unheard
Alice Cuddy – 15 January 2024
For years, units of young female conscripts had one job here. It was to sit in surveillance bases for hours, looking for signs of anything suspicious.
In the months leading up to the 7 October attacks by Hamas, they did begin to see things: practice raids, mock hostage-taking, and farmers behaving strangely on the other side of the fence.
Noa, not her real name, says they would pass information about what they were seeing to intelligence and higher-ranking officers, but were powerless to do more. “We were just the eyes,” she says.
It was clear to some of these women that Hamas was planning something big – that there was, in Noa’s words, a “balloon that was going to burst”.
The BBC has now spoken to these young women about the escalation in suspicious activity they observed, the reports they filed, and what they saw as a lack of response from senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers.
We have also seen WhatsApp messages the women sent in the months before 7 October, talking about incidents at the border. To some of them it became a dark joke: who would be on duty when the inevitable attack came?
These women were not the only ones raising the alarm, and as more testimony is gathered, anger at the Israeli state – and questions over its response – are mounting….
And needless to say (re my comment above), if you were going to let the attack go ahead, then you would dismiss the reports of activity by Hamas- and the concerns – of the border spotters and, once the attack had happened, you would – as planned – be saying and maintaining that you didn’t think Hamas had the capability, as they did of course, and also saying – as they said they did at a meeting in the hours prior to the attack – that you determined that no attack was imminent.
Anyway, in a post a couple of days ago (May 4th @ 17.42) I linked to a Times of Israel article from August 31st last year about the IDF having doubled the number of places that Hamas et al breached the border fence from 60 to 119, and I assume, like myself, just about everyone who follows Craig has come across a map (in an article) illustrating the locations which Hamas attacked. So I just did a search and found an article which included such a map (although it doesn’t show where they used boats to land north of Gaza and attack locations there, which is irrelevant anyway), and it has six red arrows depicting the locations Hamas attacked, which is obviously more representative of the number of breaches Hamas made in the border fence, and even if it was double that, it would only be twelve. I mean the Gaza Strip is only 25 miles long, and the idea that Hamas would plan to breach the fence in even sixty locations is ridiculous….
So I just this minute did a search re >how did hamas breach the border fence< and, as such, came across this Guardian article from October 9th, 2023, in which it says the following:
On motorbikes, by car and on foot, bristling with weapons, a first wave of 400 Hamas militants poured across the border into Israel at the 15 points where they had breached the security barrier.
So there you have it, and that of course sounds infinitely more plausible and realistic than the IDF nonsense. It then goes on to say (a bit further on) that:
As the minutes ticked by more waves of Hamas militants moved with bulldozers to widen the gaps for larger vehicles including four-wheel drives, pickup trucks and motorbikes to pour across, tasked with attacking 22 separate locations inside Israel….
It had identified the vulnerabilities in the fence, not least the gates along the border and Israeli patrol patterns….
Yep, the IDF and Israel just blatantly lie about every goddam thing. And the reason they came up with the 3,000 figure and the 60 breaches figure – let alone doubling it some time later – is so that they could say they were overwhelmed blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, here’s a link to the aricle I found with the map (and the red arrows):
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-images-israel-gaza-strip-hamas/
And here’s a link to the Guardian article (which also includes a map, albeit minus the red arrows):
OMW! When I did a search a bit earlier re >how did hamas breach the border fence< I saved four of the results/articles that came up to new tabs, but I read the Guardian article first and, as such, posted a couple of passages from it in my comment above. And shortly after I posted my comment, I clicked on one of the other articles I’d saved to a new tab to have a gander (an ABC News article posted on Oct 12th, 2023) – I guess I should have done so BEFORE posting my comment! – and lo-and-behold, this is what it says:
ABC News’ Visual Verification team has analyzed dozens of videos posted to social media by Hamas militants and found they form a picture of exactly where — and how — militants were able to breach the border fence and penetrate into surrounding towns.
This map identifies six points on the Israel-Gaza border fence where video evidence confirms Hamas militants crossed over to Israel.
While the Israel Defense Forces have said there were between 20 and 30 entry points, these are the only ones that ABC News can confirm with video so far….
The videos that identify the six above locations paint a picture of the movements of Hamas militants on that morning….
A detailed look at how Hamas secretly crossed into Israel
Videos paint a picture of the movements of Hamas militants on Oct. 7.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/detailed-hamas-secretly-crossed-israel/story?id=103917182
Hmm, what can you say. So it turns out that initially the IDF were saying there were between 20 and 30 entry points, and then at some stage they upped it to 60, then in August last year upped it again to 119. They doubled it twice, and were undoubtedly lying in the first place anyway. ABC News doesn’t come right out and actually say the IDF are lying, but that’s what they do, in effect. I have no idea if any other media outlets have – at ANY stage – contradicted the IDF figure, but I think we can be fairly certain that most of them haven’t, and much like in the ToI article, they just report what the IDF says without questioning it. And they are all no doubt aware of the 20 to 30 figure the IDF stated initially, and how it has doubled it once, and then doubled it again.
What really put Israel and its supporters in their own category is their evilness and sadism they show off and that, unashamed.
Just check this video of israeli/american Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, a company that provide Israel with AI technology in Gaza, a palestinian woman interrupt him condemn him for his collab with Israel, saying his tech are killing her relatives in Gaza, and instead of showing some compassion the CEO scoff at her, calling her a useful idiot.
Disgusting behaviour.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mhNLTy5pbQArticle on the incident:
Palantir’s Alex Karp tells pro-Palestine protester she is ‘product of an evil force’
In a letter to shareholders, Palantir’s CEO indirectly addressed the charged exchange about Gazahttps://www.thenationalnews.com/future/2025/05/06/palantir-earnings-alex-karp-palestine-protester/
Israel is Starving Us in Gaza
“It has been more than 30 hours since I last ate. At times, I go as long as two days without food. For most people around the world, the word hunger is a fleeting feeling, easily fixed with a trip to the kitchen or a nearby store. Saying “I’m hungry” is routine, almost meaningless. But imagine if every time you felt hungry, there was nothing to eat – no food, no relief, just emptiness. This has been my daily reality in the Gaza Strip for over a month.
Since the beginning of the war, the Israeli occupation has controlled the quantity and type of food allowed into Gaza. When a ceasefire was agreed, I hoped that everything I had endured was behind me. I held on to the hope of a better life, convinced that hunger would become something in my past. But just as I began to regain my health, the bombing and destruction returned – and with them, the starvation.
For nearly two months, food and medicine has been prevented from entering Gaza. Each morning, I wake up hoping to have breakfast, only to find nothing. Then in the afternoon, I go shopping with my mother, hoping we’ll find something to cook – but vegetables have nearly vanished from the markets, and even bread is becoming scarce. Shelves stand empty. At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before there’s nothing left to eat. And even then, what does a small meal every two or three days really mean in the face of starvation?
Hunger was never part of our lives before. We used to cook the most delicious meals, order our favourite foods, and enjoy them without a second thought. Now, we remember those days not just as part of the past, but like they belonged to another world entirely – a world that was safer, kinder, and so much more beautiful.
The blockade has forced me – and so many others – into collective punishment, facing hunger and hardship for something we had no part in. I’m just a young woman who loves life in all its beautiful forms, yet I’m made to suffer and watch my people suffer as a form of pressure to return the hostages. How is that fair? It’s not. It’s deeply unjust. As a young woman who should be in full physical and mental health, I feel my body growing weaker, more fragile with each passing moment.
I’ve read on news sites that poverty in Gaza has reached unprecedented levels. But this is not poverty, it is famine. The Israeli occupation is directly responsible for creating this humanitarian catastrophe. Children in the Gaza Strip have begun to die of hunger. Unlike adults, they cannot endure such suffering. I think of them, imagining the food they long for but can’t have – and the thought is heartbreaking.
Fear of death casts a long shadow over life in a place under occupation. Everyone who has an illness or injury can no longer access the medicine they need. In this vast prison that is Gaza, death comes in many forms: by sniper fire, by bombing, by starvation, by lack of medical care, or even from great fear. We hear that Israel has plans to completely capture Gaza and remain here, displacing so many of us. We are dying, we are starving. Are we soon to be homeless, stateless?
It feels as though the Gaza Strip is no longer part of this world, as if we’re living in some distant, forgotten galaxy. Our lives are marked by suffering and strangeness, while the rest of the world carries on as if our reality doesn’t exist.
I never truly understood the feeling of hunger – its depth, its cruelty, its ugliness – until I experienced it fully, in every painful detail.“
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/06/israel-starving-gaza-blockade-hunger
Seize Gaza or Make it Uninhabitable.
“After two months of daily bombings, raids and a total blockade preventing the entry of food and medication to Gaza, Israel approved a military plan on Monday it claims will bring about the final destruction of Hamas. The intensified offensive by the Israel Defense Forces will aim to occupy large parts of the strip and maintain a permanent Israeli presence there. It has been dubbed Operation Gideon’s Chariots – but it might be more accurate to call it the Roadmap to Hell. More of the population would be forced into an ever-shrinking “humanitarian zone”, while Israel explores options for their permanent displacement from the strip altogether.
While Israeli officials explain that the renewed onslaught would help to release hostages, it is abundantly clear that intensifying military operations would only put them at greater risk. Hostages’ families have reacted to the cabinet’s announcement with deep concern. There are still 59 Israelis held in Gaza – and it is assumed that 24 of them are alive. While Israel is willing to agree to a truce in return for hostage release, it refuses categorically to negotiate a permanent ceasefire.
If you have followed official Israeli rhetoric and actions in recent months, Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest plan will come as no surprise. Key ministers in the government, from the Likud ruling party and its more extreme allies, have repeatedly called for occupying Gaza entirely, expelling its population and establishing Israeli settlements there. Since March, Netanyahu has declared that the ultimate vision for Gaza is the “voluntary” emigration of its population, as part of the “Trump vision” (Trump has long moved on from his suggestion to move Palestinians from Gaza, and Netanyahu seems to have forgotten that Trump’s original comments included a permanent US takeover of the strip).
Is Israel really gearing up for a last push to achieve this radical agenda? It is not so clear. First, it should be noted that the plan does not seem to involve the occupation of the entire strip. The military offensive is expected to involve mass casualties, huge destruction, forced removal of population and an intensification of the humanitarian disaster. But large pockets of Hamas-dominated areas would still remain, and there’s no reason to think the organisation would capitulate.
Furthermore, the operation would not start before 16 May – after President Trump’s scheduled visit to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. Advertising the details of a big military operation 10 days in advance is clearly counterproductive, suggesting that the primary calculus of the announcement could be political, and not yet military. For Netanyahu, this is a typical modus operandi: a dramatic announcement to reshape international and domestic discussion, while leaving him with enough time and options to change course, if needed. One possible audience is the US administration. The aggressive posturing may be designed to pre-empt US pressure, as a result of Trump’s coming talks with Gulf leaders, and the increasing likelihood of a US-Iranian nuclear agreement, against Israel’s wishes.
To launch an operation on the scale needed to occupy parts of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military would need the support of tens of thousands of reservists. Reports suggest the military has started calling them up, but it is far from clear that amassing these troops would be straightforward. There is already widespread fatigue and disillusionment. In 2024, the average reservist in combat units served 136 days – compared with as few as eight days per year before 7 October. This is a heavy burden on the reservists, their families and the Israeli economy. As the war drags on and public opinion turns against it, the number of reservists reporting for duty fell to as low as 50% in some units. A survey this week showed that most Israelis (53%) believe that the expansion of the war is motivated by Netanyahu’s own political interests, while only 35% believe the government is acting in the interests of national security. If public opinion remains opposed to the offensive, it is difficult to see the government following through with it.
As public pressure grows around the hostages, along with the many scandals and failures tied to the Netanyahu government, the promise of a looming offensive provides the government with a means to reshape the narrative, in the hopes that the war drums would galvanise renewed public support. This is not the first time that Netanyahu has promised that the destruction of Hamas is within sight. In December 2023, as Israel expanded its military operations, Netanyahu pledged to bring a swift and total victory. Before Israel’s occupation of Rafah in May 2024, Netanyahu said that the victory was “one step away”, and that Rafah was the key to destroying Hamas. The war has now been going on for 19 months – the longest in Israel’s history – with no end in sight, even with the latest announcement.
In the meantime, the starvation of Gaza intensifies. Since 2 March, Israel has not allowed any food to enter the strip. This is the longest, harshest and most hermetic siege in Gaza’s recent history. The World Food Programme announced that it ran out of food on 25 April. Unicef warned that humanitarian aid, which has been the only lifeline for Gaza’s children, “is now close to running out”. With farmland destroyed by Israel, the population of 2.1 million is almost entirely dependent on food coming from the outside. Medications are also running out, and clean water is in short supply.
Whether the new offensive materialises in full or limited form, or is postponed further, the Israeli government’s objectives are clear. It is determined to pursue an open-ended war of varying intensity, making the Gaza Strip increasingly uninhabitable. The long-term horizon is the ethnic cleansing of the strip and its reoccupation by Israel, as part of a vision for a Jewish-exclusive state between the river and the sea. What was once the vision of a small outlawed group of extremists such as Rabbi Meir Kahane has now become official government policy. Whether through a decisive military action, or mass starvation, Netanyahu’s government is working to make that vision viable.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/06/seize-gaza-uninhabitable-netanyahu-plan
Just came across this by chance – ie a report by B’Tselem entitled Unwilling and Unable: Israel’s Whitewashed Investigations of the Great March of Return Protests (December 2021 – PDF 42 Pages). Here are a couple of excerpts:
Focusing on “exceptional cases” is a structural feature of the military law enforcement system.25 A striking example of this modus operandi emerged in the aftermath of Operation Protective Edge, which took place through July-August 2014. Over the course of the fighting, Israel killed 2,203 Palestinians, including at least 1,371 (62%)who did not take part in the fighting – 527 of them under the age of 18. Some 18,000 homes were destroyed or severely damaged, leaving more than 100,000 Palestinians homeless, and Israel wreaked havoc on Gaza’s infrastructure.
On the very first day of the fighting, the military assaulted the home of the Kaware’ family in Khan Yunis. The house collapsed and nine people, including five children between the ages of seven and 14, were killed. This was the first of dozens of air-and ground-strikes that targeted residential buildings with the occupants still inside, which became one of the horrifying hallmarks of Operation Protective Edge. Clearly, these attacks were not the personal initiative of soldiers, pilots or commanders in the field, but the result of a policy formed by senior government and military officials. These officials backed the policy of targeting homes, claiming time and again that it was in line with international humanitarian law and eschewing any responsibility for harm to civilians.26
As soon as the fighting was over, the whitewashing machine went into action. The government members and senior military commanders who had steered the policy – including assaults on inhabited buildings – drafted the orders and made operational decisions during the fighting were not investigated in any way. The FFA Mechanism, established after the fighting, looked into cases defined as “exceptional” and forwarded its recommendations to the MAG – who, in turn, assessed the cases entirely out of context, as though they were aberrations and not the norm. In these circumstances, small wonder that the MAG ultimately found the military’s conduct flawless and the regulations properly implemented, with the exception of a single incident in which three soldiers were convicted of stealing 2,420 NIS (~USD 750).27
The same was true of the investigations Israel conducted following Operation Cast Lead, which ended in January 2009. During the fighting, Israel killed 1,391 Palestinians, at least 759 (55%) of whom did not take part in the fighting, including 318 under the age of 18. Israel destroyed more than 3,500 houses during the fighting, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless, and caused massive damage to other structures and to infrastructure facilities. After the fighting, the MAG Corps looked into more than 400 incidents and ordered at least 52 investigations. Here, too, the MAG ultimately found that all the IDF actions had been legal, with the exception of three cases in which four soldiers were found guilty of theft, of using a child as a human shield and of unlawful use of firearms.
The fact that Israel does not examine policy or those responsible for drafting and implementing it renders its investigations meaningless. Worse still, the claim that Israel is “investigating” creates the illusion that the policy employed during the protests was legal and that the only problem was in deviation from the orders. This allows those chiefly responsible to get away with impunity, and produces a dangerous false pretense that enables the military to carry on with the same deadly policies.
Regards the Israeli army investigation into The Right of Return protests, it says the following in respect of the ICC criteria:
According to the criteria listed above, Israel cannot be said to have investigated the incidents that took place during the protests. The only body investigating these incidents is the military itself. Its focus is only on low-level soldiers, with a narrow mandate to determine only whether the open-fire regulations were breached – rather than examine the open-fire regulations and policy themselves. The military has no power to investigate those responsible for determining the policy, for legally approving it and for handing it down to the troops. At present, it is clear that Israel has not investigated, is not investigating, and has no intention of investigating the persons who bear the most responsibility for the policy that led to the killing of more than 200 Palestinians and the wounding of thousands.
https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202112_unwilling_and_unable_eng.pdf
In the process of doing a related search I came across the following article by BBC Verify, which is by far the most detailed account I have read of Hamas’s and the other groups preparations in the years prior to their October 7th attack:
How Hamas built a force to attack Israel on 7 October
27 November 2023By Abdelali Ragad, Richard Irvine-Brown, Benedict Garman and Sean Seddon
BBC Arabic and BBC VerifyFive armed Palestinian groups joined Hamas in the deadly 7 October attack on Israel after training together in military-style exercises from 2020 onwards, BBC News analysis shows.
The groups carried out joint drills in Gaza which closely resembled the tactics used during the deadly assault – including at a site less than 1km (0.6 miles) from the barrier with Israel – and posted them on social media.
They practised hostage-taking, raiding compounds and breaching Israel’s defences during these exercises, the last of which was held just 25 days before the attack.
BBC Arabic and BBC Verify have collated evidence which shows how Hamas brought together Gaza’s factions to hone their combat methods – and ultimately execute a raid into Israel which has plunged the region into war.
‘A sign of unity’
On 29 December 2020, Hamas’s overall leader Ismail Haniyeh declared the first of four drills codenamed Strong Pillar a “strong message and a sign of unity” between Gaza’s various armed factions.
As the most powerful of Gaza’s armed groups, Hamas was the dominant force in a coalition which brought together 10 other Palestinian factions in a war games-style exercise overseen by a “joint operation room”.
The structure was set up in 2018 to coordinate Gaza’s armed factions under a central command.
Prior to 2018, Hamas had formally coordinated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Gaza’s second largest armed faction and – like Hamas – a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK and other countries.
Hamas had also fought alongside other groups in previous conflicts, but the 2020 drill was billed in propaganda as evidence a wider array of groups were being unified.
Hamas’s leader said the first drill reflected the “permanent readiness” of the armed factions.
The 2020 exercise was the first of four joint drills held over three years, each of which was documented in polished videos posted on public social media channels….
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67480680
Oh, and there was this bit as well:
The IDF has previously estimated 1,500 fighters joined the 7 October raids. The Times of Israel, external reported earlier this month [November 1st] the IDF now believes the number was closer to 3,000.
And as of last August the IDF upped it to 6,000!
Here’s a clip from a Guardian article I just found, posted on October 13th, 2023:
Some of the Hamas militants, showing a taste for the spectacular, flew over on motorised paragliders – terror on wings. A total of 1,500 gunmen are believed to have crossed, under a sky lit by rocket fire.
And this is the paragraph immediately before the above clip:
The shock troops from the military wing of Hamas, known as the Qassam brigades, bristling with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, were followed by bulldozers and hundreds more armed men, many on foot, swarming through 30 breaches of the defensive line.
Hmm, how strange… in an article just four days before the Guardian had it as *15* breaches of the border fence, as I related in my 17.30 post a couple of days ago:
On motorbikes, by car and on foot, bristling with weapons, a first wave of 400 Hamas militants poured across the border into Israel at the 15 points where they had breached the security barrier.
So much doubling going on, and then MORE doubling!
Just came across this Guardian article from March 23rd, which gives a perspective from inside the hospitals re the fascist scumbags breaking the ceasefire on totally fraudulent grounds and recommencing their genocide:
‘There was just wave after wave’: Gaza doctors recount horror of the last week
About a third of all casualties admitted to Nasser hospital were under 14, as Israeli airstrikes broke fragile ceasefire
Jason Burke in JerusalemEarly on Tuesday morning, within minutes of the wave of Israeli airstrikes that broke the fragile two-month ceasefire which had brought some respite to Gaza, the emergency room of al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah was full.
“At no point were there less than 65 people in ER, all with open wounds, mainly women and children … The floor was awash with blood,” said Mark Perlmutter, a US-based volunteer orthopaedic surgeon working at the hospital that morning.
Just a few kilometres away, there were similar scenes at Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.
“There was just wave after wave,” said Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care doctor. “As soon as patients had died or been sent elsewhere and we cleared some space, more would come in. It was chaos. One doctor stepped on a corpse on the ground as he tried to do a life-saving procedure on a child.”
Palestinian medical officials say more than 200 people were killed on Tuesday morning alone across Gaza, and hundreds more injured….
It also says the following in the article, which is interesting:
Israeli military officials say 80 “terrorist” targets in 10 minutes were attacked on Tuesday morning, including leaders and key military infrastructure.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has previously blamed high levels of civilian casualties on Hamas, the militant Islamist organisation that launched the attack into Israel in October 2023 that killed 1,200, mostly civilians, and triggered the war. Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, a charge it denies.
It implies that the IDF on this occasion DIDN’T accuse Hamas of using civilians as human shields and yet a very high number of civilians – women and children and babies – were killed. And if I’m not getting my wires crossed, then the IDF COULDN’T accuse Hamas of doing so because it was a surprise attack totally out of the blue – ie the attack which brought the ceasefire to an end.
Also came across this Guardian piece posted today in which Louis Theroux speaks about the reaction to his documentary:
If you were shocked by my film on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, you haven’t been paying attention
A UK-based advocacy group for Israel has been criticised for suggesting a reduction in obesity resulting from the war in Gaza may increase life expectancy there.
The comments by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), which came amid warnings of impending famine in Gaza, were condemned as “sickening” by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).
UKLFI’s patrons include the former supreme court judge John Dyson, the former Conservative leader Michael Howard and David Pannick KC, who has represented Boris Johnson and the late queen.
The remarks were made by Jonathan Turner, the chief executive of UKLFI, in response to a motion due to be debated at the Co-operative Group’s annual general meeting calling for the retailer to stop selling Israeli produce.
Urging the Co-operative council to withdraw the motion, Turner criticised the fact that it refers to an estimated death toll of 186,000. In a letter to the Co-operative Group secretary, Turner wrote that it was “totally false and misleading” to cite the figure from a letter published by the Lancet last year, which was a projected figure including indirect casualties.
He adds: “The [Lancet] letter also ignored factors that may increase average life expectancy in Gaza, bearing in mind that one of the biggest health issues in Gaza prior to the current war was obesity.”
The death toll since Israel began its assault on Gaza after the 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas on southern Israel stands at more than 52,000, according to the territory’s health authority. A separate study in the Lancet found life expectancy in Gaza decreased by 34.9 years during the first 12 months of the war, about half (-46.3%) the prewar level of 75.5 years.
Ben Jamal, the director of the PSC, said: “As children in the Gaza Strip face the growing risk of starvation, illness and death, the suggestion by the head of UK Lawyers for Israel that they might benefit from weight loss is utterly sickening. These repulsive comments illustrate exactly what it means to be ‘for Israel’ and how low its apologists are prepared to sink in their attempts to justify genocide in Gaza.”
Chris Doyle, the director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu), wrote on X that the comments represented “atrocious views”. He said: “How very kind of Israel to put 2.3 million Palestinians on an enforced diet to improve their obesity levels.”
A complaint by UKLFI led Chelsea and Westminster hospital in London to remove a display of artwork by Palestinian children in 2023 after the group claimed that it made Jewish patients feel “vulnerable, harassed and victimised”.
It has also threatened the UK government with legal action over its decision to suspend about 30 licences for the export of arms to Israel.
Turner said: “We first pointed out that the letter published in the Lancet on 20 July 2024, to which the motion evidently referred, did not claim that 186,000 Gazans had died in the current war. It did, however, claim – without foundation – that 186,000 Gaza would be likely to die eventually as a result of the war.
“So we pointed out, secondly, that this claim was based on entirely unfounded speculation, which also ignored factors that might result in lengthening the lives of Gazans, given the public health situation existing in Gaza prior to the war, including the extent of obesity. These factors include the possible reduction in the availability of confectionery and cigarettes.
“In the context in which they were made, our statements were accurate and objective.”
“If you were shocked by my film on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, you haven’t been paying attention”
Louis Theroux
It wasn’t something I saw coming. A film about the situation in the West Bank – an evergreen story if ever there was one – going viral. Appreciation, dismay, gratitude, outrage at what the film showed … Through the week it kept going. More retweets, more feedback, a little bit of pushback. Shock was the theme of many messages – the idea that this was going on. And a feeling of: “At last.” “At last, mainstream British TV is saying something about what is happening.”
The film was a follow-up of sorts. In 2010, I’d made a documentary called Ultra Zionists. It was a look at the Israeli religious nationalist community that exists in the West Bank – the area across the eastern edge of Israel that has been under military occupation since the six-day war of 1967. Now, a decade and a half on, with the world’s attention on Gaza, it was being reported that the settlers were ramping up their activities. The Israeli government had given them thousands of assault rifles. Shootings of Palestinians, vandalism of their property and harassment were all on the rise.
We envisioned the film as a kind of road movie through a region under military occupation. On two trips of a little over a week each, with my director Josh Baker and producers Sara Obeidat and Matan Cohen, I drove up and down the West Bank. I made inroads in the settler community, interviewing exponents of the settler mindset. People such as Ari Abramowitz of Arugot Farm, a resort for tourists that sits deep inside the occupied West Bank. Abramowitz was born and raised in Texas but came to Israel as a young man, qualifying for Israeli citizenship due to his Jewish heritage. For our interview, he met me wearing an assault rifle and a handgun. He took me on a tour of the land and declared his view that the Palestinian people “don’t exist”.
I also spent time with Daniella Weiss, the woman often touted as the “godmother” of the settler project. An energetic 79-year-old, Weiss has been working to expand Israeli presence in the West Bank – or Judea and Samaria, as she calls it – for more than 50 years, lobbying governments, raising funds domestically and internationally, promoting a vision of an entirely Israeli-ruled region, with the Palestinians pushed to either accept it or leave.
Weiss hosted me at her suburban-style home in the settlement of Kedumim, amid books and family photos. Showing me a map on her wall, she explained that Lebanon, Jordan and parts of Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq were all part of Greater Israel. She explained the settlement process, of creating ever more outposts of religious Israelis. Under international law, the moving of a civilian population into occupied territory is a war crime, I said. This amused her. I mentioned that elements of the Israeli security apparatus viewed her activities with dismay and criticised the extreme settlers for engaging in what they called “Jewish terror”. She shrugged this all off.
We saw her in action at an event promoting the idea of Jewish-only settlements in Gaza – the latest frontier in settler activity. In a fiery speech, she announced that the Palestinians of the region needed to leave and go to other countries – to Turkey, to Canada – anywhere else. On another visit to the Gaza border, she brought a prominent rabbi, Dov Lior. With the smoking ruins behind him, he spoke of the need to “cleanse” the land of “camel riders”. In the encounter that made the film’s closing scene, Weiss and I had a heated exchange of views on a hilltop at Evyatar, the latest settlement to be recognised by the Israeli state.
Over the days of the shoot, driving around through checkpoints, past blast walls and guard towers and olive groves and Palestinian towns, I thought back to my previous visit 14 years before. Much was still the same. The same sense of a two-tier society: Jewish settlers who lived protected under Israeli civil law; Palestinians who were subject to an opaque regime of military rule, with roads closed, life made difficult in ways big and small. The daily indignity of queues and passport checks. The fear of settler vandalism and intimidation.
The reaction to the film, when it aired, was immediate. Positive write-ups and massive online commentary. Some reviews thought they detected a new “seriousness” in my approach. They referenced a moment when I told Daniella Weiss her views seemed “sociopathic” – after she suggested she was only interested in the welfare of her own people and didn’t give any thought to other people’s. It was said I seemed more assertive than usual. I’m not sure whether that’s true. But I do think the gravity of what is unfolding gave the encounter more impact.
A few pieces were critical of the film. The main charge was that I’d focused on a handful of crazies who weren’t representative of the wider community. “Weiss is a crackpot,” wrote a reviewer in the Daily Mail. On X, the Conservative environmentalist Ben Goldsmith claimed that the extremists in the film “represent a nutty fringe in Israeli society … about as … accurate a representation of the whole as Tommy Robinson is of UK society”.
But this comparison reveals what makes the situation in the West Bank so peculiar. In the UK, Robinson is widely seen as a fringe actor. He is excluded from politics and shunned by those close to government. And yet here was a situation where a similar figure enjoys enormous clout within the Israeli cabinet and who has the protection of the army in her project of settler expansionism. As the Haaretz journalist Etan Nechin said, responding to Goldsmith, “their representatives are literally sitting in the government and control everything from the police to treasury”.
Others asked why I didn’t mention that hundreds of thousands of the Palestinians who live under occupation in the West Bank are already refugees – or the descendants of them – having been pushed off land they lived on in 1948 when the state of Israel was created. Now they face potentially a second displacement, with settlers – and elements of the Israeli state – pushing for further deportations and continuing to make life intolerable for Palestinians.
The part of the analysis that was less explicitly stated but present in the background was the idea of “why pick on Israel?” – the idea that atrocities of comparable seriousness are taking place in other parts of the world and that by reporting on religious nationalist Israeli extremism we may have contributed to anti-Jewish sentiment. I take this charge seriously, for reasons I hope are obvious
But the urgency here is that West Bank settlers are a bellwether for where society may be going in countries across the west. In the past, the settler agenda has been supported by governments on both the left and the right but it’s currently being embraced by populist leaders and elements of the far right who find much to like about its ethno-nationalist and anti-democratic character. Around the same time that the documentary aired, Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is a settler, was being hosted at Mar-a-Lago. And so a film about extreme West Bank settlers isn’t simply about a region of the Middle East. It’s also about “us”.
While the global response to The Settlers has been encouraging in the main, there is also an aspect to it that is deflating. As Peter Oborne pointed out, quite rightly, in a sympathetic review, “this film tells us nothing new about the situation in the occupied West Bank”. The facts were well known to those paying attention – from the Oscar-winning No Other Land, to ITV’s Our Land: Israel’s Other War, a documentary that includes extraordinary scenes of settlers seizing control of farmland and making veiled references to intimidation and displacement.
One of the sadder and more outrageous results of our film involved the Palestinian activist Issa Amro. Amro lives in Hebron, a West Bank city that, since 1968, has had 700 or so settlers living at its very heart, in a cordon of Israeli military occupation. We filmed Amro on a walk through this so-called “sterile zone” – the term the army uses. Just a few days after the film aired, Issa reported on his social media that he had been harassed by settlers and soldiers at his home, in what appeared to be a reprisal for his participation in our documentary. Our team got in touch with him and did its best to provide appropriate support.
The scholar and writer Hamza Yusuf said on X that the outrage over everything depicted in The Settlers “says a lot about how well the media has shielded the public from the brutal reality of Israel’s occupation”. As proud as I am of the film, I know that our documentary could never capture the full impact of what is unfolding in the West Bank. The reality of the displacement and harassment is often in interactions that are more extreme than those I saw.
So I am grateful for the reaction. I encourage people to read and consume more on the subject. I’m glad we were able to show as much as we did. I also wish we could have shown much more.
Zionist actor Jerry Seinfeld apparently believe genocide of children is funny
Video: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJo_MStuEZF/This is what differ the zionists from other groups of people, they take pride in (Israel’s) war crimes, they want to rub it in, they are proud, they love the killing.
I’ve followed many wars and I have not seen this sick behavior by any other group. While one could always find bad apples, the whole Israel/zionist-basket seems to be completely rotten.
