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Mossad and CIA: Eyes Open or Closed? w/Ray McGovern fmr CIA

 

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US politicians' remarks adding fuel to Israeli-Palestinian conflict are very callous: Global Times editorial By Global Times

 

The casualty data of this round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is being updated every day, causing concern and distress for the civilians living in the area. According to Israeli media reports on October 9, the conflict has resulted in more than 1,300 deaths and over 5,000 injuries on both sides. Both Israel and Palestine have suffered a large number of civilian casualties. Additionally, humanitarian relief organizations of the United Nations have stated that over 120,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been displaced. The conflict is still escalating, and there is a significant degree of uncertainty about how much it will escalate and in which direction it will develop in the future. However, one thing is certain: The damage and suffering caused by the conflict will largely be borne by the local civilians, and they are in great need of care and protection from the outside world.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has ordered a "complete siege" on Gaza, where over 2 million Palestinian residents live densely packed. They already endure severe material blockades and restrictions on movement year-round, and the outbreak of the conflict has added to their dangers and hardships. Electricity and water supplies have been cut off, and a new humanitarian disaster is brewing. This is a focal point that the international community cannot afford to ignore in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The urgent task facing the international community, especially the major powers, is how to quickly put the brakes on this tragedy and prevent a larger-scale humanitarian catastrophe. It is the responsibility of the international community to address this issue promptly.

It must be said that the long-term marginalization of the Palestinian issue by Western countries, particularly the US, is extremely cruel. Western elites often ignore the actual humanitarian disasters while enthusiastically discussing abstract human rights, which is very hypocritical. We have noticed that many voices in the West are trying to create pressure for "taking sides," listing which countries "have not condemned Hamas." US Secretary of State Antony Blinken even openly "advised" Saudi Arabia during a conversation with the Saudi Foreign Minister to "clearly condemn" the attack. To be honest, Washington is not in a position to educate anyone on this issue.

All acts of violence and attacks targeting civilians are unacceptable in any civilized society and must be strongly condemned by the international community, regardless of the perpetrators. When conflicts erupt, the most rational and responsible approach is to call on all parties to exercise maximum restraint and calm and to achieve a ceasefire as soon as possible. However, in this case, we still see that the words and actions of the US and many Western countries are, in fact, fanning the flames rather than cooling down the situation. This is a consistent pattern for Western countries in many conflict regions, where they often create substantial obstacles to crisis resolution.

Take a typical example: Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, who has already announced her candidacy for the 2024 US presidential election, specifically mentioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on X (formerly Twitter), saying, "This is not just an attack on Israel - this was an attack on America." "Finish them… They should have hell to pay for what they have just done."

The remarks are filled with hostility and strong incitement. These extreme words promote hatred and represent the true attitude of many American politicians toward the Palestinian issue and other international issues. In their eyes, the world is seen as a binary opposition of black and white, with them representing justice. They are accustomed to understanding and perceiving the complex reality of international politics with simplistic and crude linear thinking, and they handle international hot issues with intricate historical backgrounds in a simplistic and crude manner. As a result, this approach only adds fuel to the fire and leads to greater disasters.

As an unhealed wound in the international community, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict repeatedly reminds the world of the extreme importance of collective security. The crisis is recurring primarily because the Middle East peace process has deviated from the right track, and the foundation of the "two-state solution" has been continuously eroded, with relevant United Nations resolutions not being effectively implemented. While it is important for the international community to mediate and promote the immediate de-escalation of the situation, this is only a temporary solution for the Israeli-Palestinian issue. To truly achieve lasting peace and allow the residents of this land to live stable and dignified lives, it is necessary to return to the grand ideas and principles of collective security. The pursuit of "absolute security" will only result in absolute insecurity, and there have already been enough tragedies and lessons learned from this.

It is essential to quickly de-escalate the situation and stop innocent civilians from becoming victims, as this is a basic human right. Major powers, in particular, have a responsibility to play their role and should take necessary actions to promote dialogue, achieve a ceasefire, and restore peace. Any actions that add fuel to the fire or take sides will only further complicate and hinder the situation. Only by truly practicing the concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security can the Israeli-Palestinian conflict achieve lasting peace.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202310/1299541.shtml

 

 

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in Palestine — by Jonathan Cook

 

The current outpouring of sympathy for Israel should make anyone with half a heart retch.

Not because it is not awful that Israeli civilians are dying and suffering in such large numbers. But because Palestinian civilians in Gaza have faced repeated rampages from Israel decade after decade, producing far more suffering, but have never elicited a fraction of the concern currently being expressed by Western politicians or the public.

The West’s hypocrisy over Palestinian fighters killing and wounding hundreds of Israelis and holding dozens more hostage in communities surrounding and inside besieged Gaza is stark indeed.

This is the first time Palestinians, caged in the coastal enclave, have managed to inflict a significant strike against Israel vaguely comparable to the savagery Palestinians in Gaza have faced repeatedly since they were entombed in a cage more than 15 years ago, when Israel began its blockade by land, sea, and air in 2007.

Western media are calling the jailbreak and attack by Palestinians from Gaza “unprecedented”—and the most dismal intelligence failing by Israel since it was caught off-guard during the Yom Kippur War exactly 50 years ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Hamas, which nominally runs the open-air prison of Gaza, of starting “a cruel and evil war.” But the truth is that the Palestinians have “started” nothing. They have managed, after so much struggle, to find a way to hurt their tormentor.

Inevitably for the Palestinians, as Netanyahu also observed, “the price will be heavy” – especially for civilians. Israel will inflict on the prisoners the severest punishment for their impudence.

Watch how little sympathy and concern there will be from the West for the many Palestinian men, women, and children who are killed once again by Israel. Their immense suffering will be obscured, and justified, by the term “Israeli retaliation.”

The real lessons

All the current analysis focusing on Israel’s intelligence “blunders” distracts from the real lesson of these rapidly evolving events.

No one really cared while Gaza’s Palestinians were subjected to a blockade imposed by Israel that denied them the essentials of life. The few dozen Israelis being held hostage by Hamas fighters pale in comparison with the two million Palestinians held hostage by Israel in an open-air prison for nearly two decades.

No one really cared when it emerged that Gaza’s Palestinians had been put on a “starvation diet” by Israel – only limited food was allowed in, calculated to keep the population barely fed.

No one really cared when Israel bombed the coastal enclave every few years, killing many hundreds of Palestinian civilians each time. Israel simply called it “mowing the lawn”. The destruction of vast areas of Gaza, what Israeli generals boasted of as returning the enclave to the Stone Age, was formalized as a military strategy known as the “Dahiya doctrine“.

No one really cared when Israeli snipers targeted nurses, youngsters, and people in wheelchairs who came out to protest against their imprisonment by Israel. Many thousands were left as amputees after those snipers received orders to shoot the protesters indiscriminately in the legs or ankles.

Western concern at the deaths of Israeli civilians at the hands of Palestinian fighters is hard to stomach. Have not many hundreds of Palestinian children died over the past 15 years in Israel’s repeated bombing campaigns on Gaza? Did their lives not count as much as Israeli lives – and if not, why not?

After so much indifference for so long, it is difficult to hear the sudden horror from western governments and media because Palestinians have finally found a way – mirroring Israel’s inhumane, decades-long policy – to fight back effectively.

This moment rips off the mask and lays bare the undisguised racism that masquerades as moral concern in western capitals.

Hypocrisy distilled

Distilling that hypocrisy is Volodymr Zelenskiy, Ukraine‘s president. At the weekend, he issued a lengthy tweet condemning Palestinians as “terrorists” and offering Israel his unwavering support.

He averred that “Israel’s right to self-defense is unquestionable”, adding: “The world must stand united and in solidarity so that terror does not attempt to break or subjugate life anywhere and at any moment.”

Not all forms of ‘terrorism’, it seems, are equal in the eyes of Zelenskiy, or his patrons in western capitals. Certainly, not the state terrorism of Israel that has made Palestinian lives a misery for decades

The inversion of reality is breathtaking. The Palestinians cannot “subjugate life” in Israel. They have no such power, even if a few briefly managed to break out of their cage. It is Israel that has been subjugating Palestinian life for decades.

Not all forms of “terrorism,” it seems, are equal in the eyes of Zelenskiy, or his patrons in Western capitals. Certainly, it is not the state terrorism of Israel that has made Palestinian lives a misery for decades.

How does Israel have an “unquestionable right” to “defend itself” from the Palestinians whose territory it occupies and controls? How does Russia then not have an equal claim to be “defending itself” when it hits Ukrainian cities in “retaliation” for Ukrainian strikes intended to liberate its territory from Russian occupation?

Israel, the much stronger, belligerent party, is now laying waste to Gaza “in retaliation,” as the BBC puts it, for the latest Palestinian attack.

So on what grounds will Zelenskiy or his officials be able to condemn Moscow when it fires missiles “in retaliation” for Ukraine’s strikes on Russian territory? How, if Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation of Gaza is terrorism, as Zelenskiy asserts, is Ukrainian resistance to Russian occupation not equally terrorism?

No hiding place

By indulging Israel in its deceptions, Israel’s allies have allowed it to perpetrate ever more outrageous lies. At the weekend, Netanyahu warned Palestinians in Gaza to “leave now” because Israeli forces were preparing to “act with all force”.

But Netanyahu knows, as do his Western enablers, that Gaza’s population has nowhere to flee. There is no hiding place. Palestinians have been sealed into Gaza since Israel besieged it by land, sea, and air.

The only Palestinians able to “leave Gaza” are the armed factions who broke out of their Israeli-imposed jail and are being denounced as “terrorists” by Western politicians and media.

Western governments so horrified by the Palestinian attack on Israel are also the governments that are remaining silent as Israel turns off the electricity to the prison that is Gaza—again in supposed “retaliation.”

The collective punishment of two million Palestinians in Gaza, dependent on Israel for power because Israel surrounds and controls every aspect of their lives in the enclave, is a war crime.

Strangely, western officials understand it is a war crime when Russia bombs power stations in Ukraine, turning off the lights. They scream for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be dragged to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. So why is it so difficult for them to understand the parallels of what Israel is doing to Gaza?

Daring escape

There are two immediate, and contrasting, lessons to be learned from what has happened this weekend.

The first is that the human spirit cannot be caged indefinitely. Palestinians in Gaza have been constantly devising new ways to break free from their chains.

They have built a network of tunnels, most of which Israel has located and destroyed. They have fired rockets that are invariably shot down by ever more sophisticated interception systems. They have protested en masse at the heavily fortified fences, topped by gun towers, Israel surrounded them with—only to be shot by snipers.

Now they have staged a daring escape. Israel will batter the enclave back into submission with massive bombardments, but only “in retaliation,” of course. The Palestinians’ craving for freedom and dignity will not be diminished. Another form of resistance, doubtless more brutal still, will emerge.

And the parties most responsible for that brutality will be Israel and the West which supports it so slavishly, because Israel refuses to stop brutalizing the Palestinians it forces to live under its rule.

The second lesson is that Israel, endlessly indulged by its Western patrons, still has no incentive to internalize the fundamental truth above. The rhetoric of its current government of fascists and Jewish supremacists may be particularly ugly, but there is a broad consensus among Israelis of all political stripes that the Palestinians must continue to be oppressed.Which is why the so-called opposition will not hesitate to support the military pounding of the long-besieged enclave of Gaza, killing yet more Palestinian civilians to “teach them a lesson,” a lesson no one in Israel can articulate beyond asserting that Palestinians must accept their permanent inferiority and imprisonment.

Already, the “good Israelis” – opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz – are in discussions with Neyanyahu to join him in an “emergency unity government”.

What “emergency”? The emergency of Palestinians demanding the right not to live as prisoners in their own homeland.

Israelis and Westerners can continue their mental gymnastics to justify the Palestinians’ oppression and refuse them any right to resist. But their hypocrisy and self-deceptions stand exposed for the rest of the world to see.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has Hamas, which nominally runs the open-air prison of Gaza, of starting “a cruel and evil war.” But the truth is that the Palestinians have “started” nothing. They have managed, after so much struggle, to find a way to hurt their tormentor. No one really cared while Gaza’s Palestinians were subjected to a blockade imposed by Israel that denied them the essentials of life. The few dozen Israelis being by Hamas fighters pale in comparison with the two million Palestinians held hostage by Israel in an open-air prison for nearly two decades.

 

Jonathan Cook won the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include: “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (2008). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

Originally published in Middle East Eye

 

https://countercurrents.org/2023/10/the-hypocrisy-at-the-heart-of-western-reaction-to-hamas-attack-on-israel/

 

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UK ALLOWS KEY HAMAS FUNDER TO HAVE MILITARY BASE IN NORTHERN ENGLAND

 

The British government says it ‘stands by Israel’ and condemns Hamas ‘terrorism’ against it. But Hamas is being funded by Qatar, with whom the Royal Air Force operates two joint squadrons, allowing the Gulf regime to have a military base in northern England. MARK CURTIS 

 

As Gaza continues to endure all-out war, UK ministers have been lining up to say they “stand with Israel”. They have unequivocally condemned as terrorism the actions of Hamas, whose militants moved into southern Israel from Gaza on Saturday.

The Israeli military’s now massive bombardment of Gaza, which is deemed by international bodies to be under Israeli occupation, threatens to engulf Gaza in its most brutal conflict yet. 

The UK’s extensive military support of Israel has been all but erased by the British media in recent years – but so too has Whitehall’s new special relationship with a key Hamas supporter, the authoritarian Gulf regime of Qatar.

While Iran is Hamas’ main funder, Qatar’s financial support of the group dates back to at least 2008 and has involved hundreds of millions of dollars for Hamas’ political and humanitarian wings. 

In the past Qatar has also funded Hamas “military personnel”, one of the group’s leaders said in 2016. The UK designates the whole of Hamas, including its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, which is also mainlyfunded by Iran, as a terrorist organisation.

Yet the RAF operates two joint squadrons with Qatar, the first with any nation since the Second World War when Polish pilots helped fight the Battle of Britain.

One squadron operates out of RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire and was agreed in 2017. It was part of a £6bn arms deal in which the UK will sell Qatar 24 Typhoon warplanes alongside the nine Hawk aircraft, both manufactured by British firm BAE Systems. The UK also provides a “bespoke support and training package”.

The other squadron is a joint training unit for the Hawk fighter, based at RAF Leeming in Yorkshire.

“Qatar and the UK share mutual interests in ensuring stability in the Middle East”, the RAF has stated, having recently agreed to extend the joint squadron at Coningsby for a further two years.

 

https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-allows-key-hamas-funder-to-have-military-base-in-northern-england/

 

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