If Israel gets its way, (and when doesn’t it?), the survivors of the current genocidal slaughter will be herded off into the barren Sinai Desert, with Western governments’ approval and complicity.
Israel is already trying to bribe the Egyptians into allowing this, saying they will pay off the country’s massive debt to the (Jew-owned) central banks and IMF in exchange.
In a decade or two Gaza may well look something like the photo below, bankrolled by US and UK taxpayers and for Jews only, while the remaining displaced and ‘demilitarised’ Palestinians are forced to live in tents.
PHOTO : Dubai : A nasty little theocracy in a shopping mall, towers built by slaves.
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The evidence that Israel is preparing to ‘cleanse’ Gaza and expel its population into Sinai is growing by the day:
1. A leaked document from the Israeli intelligence ministry sets out how the expulsion into Sinai can be implemented.
2. Netanyahu is known to have recently lobbied EU states – with some success – to publicly back an expulsion of Gaza’s Palestinians into Sinai.
3. Israel has a ‘peace policy’ on the drawing board – known as the Greater Gaza Plan – approved by the US since at least 2007 that requires transferring Palestinians into Sinai.
4. Leading Israeli officials have openly declared since Oct 7 the need to drive Gaza’s population into Sinai.
5. Israel’s public policy of turning Gaza into ‘a place where no human can live’ is being effected on the ground as we speak.
The details of Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme for Gaza are in Jonathan Cook’s latest article :
In preparation for its ground invasion of Gaza, the Israeli army mobilized Ezra Yachin, a 95-year-old army veteran, to “motivate” the troops. Yachin was a member of the Lehi Zionist militia that carried out numerous massacres of Palestinian civilians, including the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, where over 100 Palestinian civilians, many women and children, were slaughtered.
“Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them,” Yachin said addressing Israeli troops.
“Erase them, their families, mothers and children,” he went on. “These animals can no longer live.“
“Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them,” he said. “If you have an Arab neighbour, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him.“
On the eve of the ground invasion, Israel is not only decimating Gaza with airstrikes but employing the oldest and cruelest weapon of war – starvation. Israel’s message is clear. Leave Gaza or Die.
Incredibly, the genocide is under way with the active support of almost all western governments.
*****
Here former UK ambassador Craig Murray examines what will happen internationally, and what is happening in western societies.
Israel plainly is on the course of further escalation and intends to kill many thousands more Palestinians. More than 2,000 Palestinian children alone have now been killed by Israeli aerial attack in the last fortnight.
Gaza has no defence from bombs and missiles, and there is no military reason why Israel cannot keep this up for months and simply rely upon aerial massacre. We are perhaps within a week of thirst, starvation and disease killing even more people per day than bombardment.
The population of Gaza are simply defenceless. Only international intervention can stop Israel from doing whatever it wishes, and those countries which have influence with Israel are actively abetting and encouraging the genocide.
The question is, what is Israel’s aim? Do they intend to reduce the Gaza Strip still further, annexing half or more of it? Will starvation and horror enable the international community to force Egypt to accept the expulsion of the population of Gaza into the Sinai Desert as a “humanitarian” move?
That appears to be the end game: expulsion of population and territorial expansion into Gaza. That would require a ground invasion, but probably not until after even more intense aerial bombardment to eliminate all resistance. This territorial ambition of course accords with the violent expansion of illegal settlement in the West Bank which is currently under way, with the world paying almost no attention. It is very hard indeed to comprehend the passivity of Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas at the moment.
Netanyahu’s political stock within Israel is so low, that the only way he can recover is by making a major step towards the complete genocide of the Palestinian people and the achievement of Greater Israel. Netanyahu now knows that there is no violence against Palestinians so extreme that the western political elite will not support it under the mantra of “Israel’s right to self-defence”.
I do not see any salvation for Gaza coming from Hezbollah. If Hezbollah were to employ their vaunted missile strike capabilities, the moment to do it would be now when the Israeli armour is drawn up in massive parks outside Gaza, a perfect target even for longer range missiles of limited accuracy. Once dispersed into Gaza the armour would be far harder for Hezbollah to hit at range.
Hezbollah is even better equipped now to fight a defensive war in Lebanon than it was when it defeated the Israeli advance in 2006. But it is not configured or equipped to fight an aggressive ground war into Israel, which would be a disaster. It also has to worry about hostile militias in its rear. If Hezbollah can provoke an Israeli incursion into Southern Lebanon, that would enable it to inflict substantial casualties, but Israel is not going to do that in a way that detracts from its capabilities in Gaza.
Iran has greatly improved its diplomatic position in the last year. The Chinese-brokered lessening of hostility with Saudi Arabia has potential to revolutionise Middle Eastern politics, and the benefits of this will not lightly be laid aside by Tehran. Iran had also made real progress with the Biden administration in overcoming the blind hostility of the Trump years.
Iran has no desire to throw away these gains. That is why it seems to me extremely improbable that Iran had endorsed the 7 October attacks by Hamas. Iran is now restraining Hezbollah. But there are limits to the patience of Iran. The extraordinary truth is that Iran is probably the only state under discussion here with a genuine humanitarian concern for the lives of Palestinians. If the genocide unfolds as horribly as I anticipate, Iran can be pushed too far.
That said, I offer just a cautionary footnote that Saudi Arabia is not, under MBS, quite the reliable US/Israeli puppet it has historically been. I do not have much time for MBS, as you know, but his high opinion of the importance of the Al Saud and their leadership role among arabs, makes him a different proposition to his predecessor.
Saudi Arabia has leverage. The Biden administration has gone all in on regional domination, sending two aircraft carrier groups into a situation which should it escalate, could send oil prices to highest-ever levels, with Russia blocked from the market. Biden is risking a huge gas price hike in an election year.
Biden’s calculation, or that of his security services, is that nobody can or will intervene to save the Palestinians. They judge the genocide as containable. That is an extraordinary gamble.
There has been an extraordinary amount of vitriol aimed at Qatar by pro-Israel commentators, for hosting the Hamas office and leadership. This is extraordinarily ignorant.
Qatar hosts Hamas, just as Qatar hosted the Taliban Information Office, at the direct request of the United States. It provides a means of dialogue between the United States and Hamas (exactly as it did with the Taliban) both at deniable level, and through third parties, including of course the government of Qatar. Thus when Blinken arrived in Qatar one day and the Iranian foreign minister the next, these were in fact “proximity talks” involving Hamas.
How do I know? Well, at Julian’s request, I visited Qatar about five years ago to discuss whether Julian, and Wikileaks, might potentially relocate to Qatar, which Julian had described as “the new Switzerland” in terms of being a neutral diplomatic venue.
It was explained to me by the Qataris, at a very senior level, that Qatar hosted the Taliban Information Office and Hamas because the United States government had asked them to do so. Qatar hosted a major US military base and depended on US support against a Saudi takeover. If I could generate a request from then President Trump for Qatar to host Wikileaks, then they would do so. Otherwise, no.
So I know what I am talking about.
One tiny but good result of this brokering in Qatar was the release of two American national hostages. British diplomats have told me that discussions in Qatar have so far held back the Israeli ground offensive, but I am not convinced that Israel really wished to do this yet. They are having sadistic fun shooting children in a barrel.
Qatar has also been the origin of deals allowing in a tiny amount of aid to Gaza, but this is so small as to be almost irrelevant. It is performative humanitarianism by the West.
I have frequently praised China for the fact that their economic dominance has been unaccompanied by any aggressive desire for world hegemony, but this also has its downside. China sees no benefit in assisting the Palestinians in practice. Hopeful reports of China sending warships refer simply to pre-planned exercises, largely in the Gulf. That China is carrying out such joint exercises with Gulf states is indeed part of a long term increasing of influence, but is not relevant to the immediate reality.
Russia of course has its hands full in Ukraine. It is allowing its Syrian bases to be used as a conduit following increased Israeli bombing of Syrian airports, but there is not a great deal more that it can do. Erdoğan is genuinely furious at what is happening in Gaza, but Turkey is struggling to find any way to apply pressure, barring linkage to Ukraine shipping issues (which Erdoğan is considering).
That is a very rough and ready tour d’horizon, but the net effect is that I see no current hope for averting the atrocity which is unfolding before our horrified eyes.
Most of our eyes are indeed horrified. The gap between the western political and media elites and their people on this issue is simply enormous. Western leaders have not only failed to restrain Israel, they have almost unanimously egged Netanyahu on, with the continued repetition of the phrase “Israel’s right to self-defence” as justification for the mass bombing, removal and starvation of an entire civilian population.
The western leadership glee in vetoing every attempt at a ceasefire resolution at the UN is astonishing.
Massive demonstrations have been taking place across Europe against this unspeakable massacre, and the knee-jerk reaction of politicians at their isolation from public opinion has been to try to make such shows of dissent illegal. In the UK people have been arrested for displaying Palestinian flags. In Germany pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been entirely banned. Something similar has been attempted in France, with predictable failure.
I have myself attended pro-Palestinian demonstrations in three different countries, and the most striking thing on each occasion was the strong support of passers-by, and the number of people spontaneously coming out to join the demo as it passed.
A wave of racism has been unleashed in the UK and elsewhere. I am astonished by the Islamophobia and racial hatred released online, with no apparent comeback. UK Ministers claim to be alarmed at the “terrorist sympathies” of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, yet it is perfectly legal to call for Palestinians to be exterminated, to compare them to different types of animal and vermin, and suggest they should be driven into the sea. That does not horrify ministers at all.
I am personally now subject to a police investigation for “terrorism” merely for suggesting that the Palestinians too have a right to self-defence and may offer armed resistance to genocide – a right they enjoy beyond doubt in international law. Remember, Israel has formally declared war. Is it the position in British law that the only belief it is legal to hold and express, is that in this war the Palestinians must simply line up quietly to be killed?
The step change in western authoritarianism is likely to be met by blowback.
After 20 years, we had finally come through the vicious cycle of the “War on Terror”, where terrorism, repression and institutionalised Islamophobia all boosted each other across the western world. Outrage at the appalling genocide in Gaza is very likely to result in isolated incidences of, also appalling, Islamist-inspired violence in Western countries, including the UK, particularly because of the UK’s military support of Israel.
That consequential terrorism in itself will be cited by the political elite as justifying their stance. And so the vicious cycle will restart. This will of course be welcome to the agents of the security state, whose power, budgets and prestige will be boosted. Once again we have to be on the lookout for radicalisation and real terrorism, but also for agent-provocateur-led terrorism and for false flag terrorism.
If we descend back into that nightmare again, the direct cause will be elite support for the genocide of the Palestinian people and the Islamophobic narrative. The major cause of terrorism here is Israel, the terrorist apartheid state.
Ever since its formation in 1948, the state of Israel’s behaviour towards its Arab neighbours, and the inhabitants of the territories it occupies, has consistently been characterised by a level of inhumanity and depravity more egregious than is considered ”normal” even in conditions of war — whether it be killing unarmed demonstrators, journalists and medics in Gaza and the West Bank, torturing and sexually harassing Palestinians in Israeli prisons; [https://www.thejerusalemfund.org/…/sexual-harassment… ]; imprisoning children; deliberately bombing civilians – or here in this photograph from the 1967 war, humiliating Egyptian prisoners by removing their clothes and force-marching them in their underwear before killing them.
The relentless attempts to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism must never be allowed to succeed, or justice for the Terrorist State’s countless victims over the decades will never be served.
Starmer’s removal of the party whip from Jeremy Corbyn for ”antisemitism” is scandalous, unjustified and unforgivable.
It is also an unmistakable indicator of the extent to which the Israel Lobby has penetrated English politics, and demonstrates its ultimate success in conflating anti-Zionism and the support of Palestinian rights with the bogus slur of antisemitism.
Bear in mind that the occupation of Palestinian territory and human rights violations by the Israeli State are illegal under international law. To shield a terrorist state by punishing criticism of it is , frankly, frightening for the future of morality and free speech in the UK.
Mass resignation from the Labour Party is the least that is now required.
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Time to Stand Up and Be Counted :
~ article by historian and former UK Ambassador Craig Murray
Today, nothing is more important than to say that we will not be silent on the dreadful oppression of the Palestinian people; the daily beatings, killings, humiliations, demolitions, expropriations and destruction of groves that are the concomitant of Israeli illegal occupation.
We will never be browbeaten into silence on the slow genocide of the Palestinian people.
Nobody with any grasp on the location of their right mind believes Jeremy Corbyn to be an anti-Semite. Nobody with any grasp on their right mind believes the Labour Party is now anything but the substitutes’ bench for the Neoconservative team. Under Keir Starmer, the Labour Party has failed to oppose the granting of legal powers to the security services to kill, torture, entrap, forge and fake with impunity. It has failed to oppose the limitation of prosecution of British soldiers for war crimes. The Labour Party now seeks to erase all trace that it might once have been a party that offered an alternative to the right wing security state.
As Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer pressurised Swedish prosecutors who wished to drop the case against Julian Assange, to persist in order that he might be rendered to the USA. He further persuaded them not to interview Julian here, which is standard practice when he was never charged but only wanted for questioning, and which would have reduced Julian’s ordeal by four years.
Starmer received £50.000 in personal donations from lobbyist Sir Trevor Chinn to fund his leadership bid.
It is perfectly plain that Starmer’s aim in suspending Corbyn is to drive the mass membership that Corbyn attracted out of the Labour Party, and make it a reliable arm of the right wing security state. He wants the Labour Party to be financially dependent not on its members, who have annoying principles, but on donors like Chinn.
The media and political elite have attained their aim; there is no longer any point in voting in Westminster elections. A right wing government supporting the neo-con status quo and the ever tightening security state is now firmly guaranteed and cannot be influenced by a Westminster election.
I have been prepared to give Keir Starmer the benefit of my doubt that he could provide effective opposition to the appalling current UK government, but in the space of 24 hours all hope has been dissipated.
First the new Labour leader bowed down to the rampant Zionist lobby in the media – and all the main political parties – by issuing an ”unreserved apology” to former Labour staff members and to the fanatical anti-Corbyn campaigner John Ware, the journalist who presented the evidence-free Panorama programme on Labour’s alleged ‘anti-semitism’. He even agreed to pay “substantial damages” to Ware and to seven so-called ‘whistleblowers’ over “defamatory and false allegations” made following the programme.
(By the way, how often must it be repeated that criticism of Israel’s worst excesses is NOT anti-semitism ? )
Now, at PMQs today, Starmer has called for the news channel RT to be banned (it is already refused air-time by Richard Branson’s Virgin Media, which tells its own story). ‘Sir’ Keir told the Commons: “One way the Government can seek to clamp down on Russian influence is to prevent the spread of Kremlin backed disinformation.”
But RT is the UK’s most informative TV news channel, providing truthful, objective coverage of events and offering a platform to dissident voices like George Galloway, Ken Livingstone, Alex Salmond and others whose anti-neoliberal stance effectively disqualifies them from corporate media and that now abject government propaganda tool, the BBC.
There are even reports that Starmer is considering the removal of the Labour whip from Jeremy Corbyn, meaning that he would be booted out of the parliamentary party and become an independent MP.
I would hope for (and expect) a mass exodus of true radicals and socialists from the Party if he goes ahead with this, and Labour would deserve its subsequent marginalisation.
It’s apparent that Labour is now firmly in the grip of the Blairites and the Zionist lobby. Sad to say, as a vehicle for the progressive change and the new policies the UK so urgently needs, the once great Labour Party is now finished.
Petition : Call for the UK government to formally recognise the State of Palestine
I will not sign.
Sadly, there is no Palestinian state to recognize, within the 1967 or any other borders. These petitions achieve nothing and merely serve to delay the long-overdue death of the so-called ”two-state solution”, the illusion of which has guaranteed Israel’s survival as a Jewish racist state for decades.
Crucially, such token ‘recognition’ accepts Israel’s survival in its current racist form, and even aims to impose arrangements that prevent Israel’s collapse.
Well-meaning liberals and progressives, inside Israel and outside, who advocate a ”Two-State” solution are choosing to ignore an alternative, based on the principle of equality for all, on the separation of state from religion, and on an end to discrimination and racial apartheid — a One-State Solution : LiberatedPalestine!
While the world looks away, Palestinians living under military occupation in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank are subjected to extreme state-sponsored violence of the kind seen in the US last week, as a near everyday occurrence.
For one community, the disproportionate violence faced by black people at the hands of US police forces has special resonance as it reflects their own experiences with the authorities.
”Since the early 90s, hundreds of law enforcement officers, including police officers and agents from the FBI, CIA, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), have either been sent to Israel through police exchanges, or attended summits within the US that were sponsored by Israeli lobby organisations.
Police forces from Florida, New Jersey Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state and others have participated in the training, including one that took place in Minneapolis, the city where Floyd was killed.”
The appointment of Priti Patel as the new UK Home Secretary is an utter disgrace.
This is an absolutely extraordinary appointment given that she was forced to resign in disgrace after being caught red-handed secretly colluding with a foreign government while she was International Development Secretary.
She secretly met 12 times with Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu – not once with Palestinians – without telling Boris Johnson or Theresa May, and freelanced UK-taxpayer funding to the IDF’s illegal occupation of Golan.
Two of Ms Patel’s secret meetings were with Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Minister of Public Security, Strategic Affairs and Minister of Information.. He has no developmental brief. His ministerial brief is to suppress activism for Palestinian human rights in Israel and abroad. The purpose of Patel’s meetings with him, and the full agenda, need to be disclosed.
This treasonous woman, who should be in jail rather than promoted to one of the highest offices of the land, essentially worked as the agent of a foreign state embedded within the UK government,
”Don’t worry about American pressure. We the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it.”~ Ariel Sharon, former Prime Minister of Israel.
Israel controls the President, the Congress, the Senate, all major media outlets, and specifically American foreign policy in the Middle East through its Zionist arm The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Every Congress candidate, of both parties, must sign an Israel loyalty pledge in order to get campaign funding. Any Congress member who does not sign the Israeli pledge is politically persecuted, vilified by the media, and does not get funded. Only one person currently in Congress, Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, has refused to sign this AIPAC Loyalty Oath to Israel.
Article by Dr. Elias Akleh, an Arab-American of Palestinian descent. His family was evicted from Haifa, Palestine after the 1948 Nakba when Zionists stole his family’s property. The family was evicted again from the West Bank during the 1967 Naksah, when Zionists occupied the rest of Palestine.
Ever since its formation in 1948, the state of Israel’s behaviour towards its Arab neighbours, and the inhabitants of the territories it occupies, has consistently been characterised by a level of inhumanity and depravity more egregious than is considered ”normal” even in conditions of war — whether it be killing unarmed demonstrators, journalists and medics in Gaza, torturing and sexually harassing Palestinians in Israeli prisons [ https://www.thejerusalemfund.org/…/sexual-harassment-and-vi… ], imprisoning children, deliberately bombing civilians – or here in this photograph from the 1967 war, humiliating Egyptian prisoners by removing their clothes and force-marching them in their underwear before killing them.
The current relentless attempts to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism must never be allowed to succeed, or justice for the Terrorist State’s countless victims over the decades will never be served.
~ article by historian and former UK Ambassador Craig Murray
I have been prepared to give Keir Starmer the benefit of my doubt that he could provide effective opposition to the appalling current UK government, but in the space of 24 hours all hope has been dissipated.
”Don’t worry about American pressure. We the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it.”~ Ariel Sharon, former Prime Minister of Israel.
*Orbis Non Sufficit* 