Israeli forces have killed 2400 Palestinian children since year 2000
By Pearls and Irritations

While mainstream media and our own and other Western government’s cup runneth over in support of Israel, a deeper story of occupation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid underpins the decades-long suffering of the people of Palestine from successive Israeli governments that have been supported and funded by the US Government. While the bloodshed and loss of life on both sides is devastating, the lack of balance in reporting the facts behind the conflict, that we watch unfold in horror, is both predictable and complicit.

Paul Heywood-Smith

We awoke on Sunday morning to learn of the events in Israel/Palestine. Of course, our press/media used the usual phrases – ‘terrorism, terrorists, unprovoked attack, invasion’. It repeated the usual mantra emanating from the US that Israel ‘has a right to defend itself and its people’, whilst never alluding to the same right existing for the Palestinian people. It speaks of the US’ ‘unwavering’ commitment to Israel and presents that commitment as something to be lauded.

There is a pressing need for Australians to assess the situation from an informed and balanced position. Australians must understand that what they are seeing is the response of a people pushed beyond endurance. Since 1948 Israel has been perpetrating crimes against humanity, collective punishment, and has created an open-air prison for Palestinians in the Gaza strip. Palestinians have suffered relentless attacks by Jewish settlers on their towns, cities, and holy sites.

The situation in Gaza is bleak. It was partly addressed in the writer’s earlier article of 24 October 2022, Australia must overturn its listing of Hamas as a terrorist organisation. The first thing to remember is that under international law, Gaza remains under Israeli military occupation.

The humanitarian catastrophe has continued unabated in Gaza for years. The suffocating Israeli military and naval blockade has lasted for 16 years. That blockade has imprisoned and starved two million people and denied them medical aid. Palestinians in Gaza are routinely massacred, and children have been traumatised by recurring bombing campaigns. In essence, Gaza is one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world. The blockade extends to commercial goods, food, fuel, and even humanitarian aid. The ongoing siege is continuously destroying the lives of the people who live there, in extreme poverty, with little access to clean water and with about four hours of electricity a day. Hamas is responding to same, to occupation, oppression, illegal settlement, and desecration of Palestinian religious symbols, especially, and recently, at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

But of course, it is not just Gazans. It is Palestinians. In the West Bank, since the election of the current government in Israel, that government has escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, and daily humiliation. Recently, Israeli forces have repeatedly stormed the holiest Muslim sites in Jerusalem. And then there are, as well, the attacks against Palestinian citizens of Israel. The occupation is over all Palestinians, creating an apartheid regime. Children are dragged from their beds in night raids by Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers and held without charge in military prisons. Palestinian homes are torched by settlers, or destroyed by the IDF. Entire Palestinian villages are forced to flee, abandoning homes and orchards and land that has been in their family for generations. What we have seen on the weekend is the resistance that naturally emerges as a response to violent apartheid.

Whilst this has followed the much vaunted alleged discussions between Israel and Saudi Arabia – the so-called ‘normalisation deal’ – it is interesting to note the Saudi Foreign Ministry Statement issued after the Palestinian attack. The statement was in these terms: “Saudi Arabia warned Israel of the possible risks of escalation due to the occupation and deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, as well as the systematic provocation against their holy sites.”

Australia’s involvement has mirrored that of its boss, the US. Australia’s failure to act has contributed to the current quagmire. Had the ALP on gaining office in 2022 done what its rank and file had called for at preceding National Conferences – namely to recognise Palestine – who knows what might have followed. It is reasonable to think that a chain re-action may have been set afoot. It is probable that New Zealand would have followed suit and others followed. This may have been the catalyst for a resolution of the dispute, possibly on the basis of two States on the 1967 borders.

Instead, where are we now heading? Israel’s current government wants to destroy the Palestinian Authority, take direct control of the entire historical Palestine – what they call ‘The Greater Land of Israel’ – and complete the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

The immediate Israeli response to the weekend attack is concerning. Netanyahu has called on Palestinians in Gaza to “Leave now” as Israeli forces “act everywhere” with “all the force”. Such a declaration must be recognised as one of genocide. Gaza’s two million plus Palestinians cannot escape Israel’s attacks. And are we seriously heading to a full re-occupation of Gaza?

What is needed is a solution based on justice, and not the destruction of one party. That solution can only be to bring an end to apartheid, and the occupation, and to promote a future based on justice and equality for all.

As a start, and a prompt, I once again call upon our government to recognise Palestine. Have the courage to stand up to Israel, and its primary backer, the United States. Oh, and another thing, Mr. Prime Minister, and Ms. Foreign Minister – please don’t purport to speak for all Australians when you say “Israel has a right to defend itself”.

https://johnmenadue.com/palestinians-pushed-beyond-endurance-defend-their-homeland-against-violent-apartheid/

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BY PEPE ESCOBAR

Hamas’ Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was meticulously planned. The launch date was conditioned by two triggering factors. 

First was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flaunting his 'New Middle East' map at the UN General Assembly in September, in which he completely erased Palestine and made a mockery of every single UN resolution on the subject. 

Second are the serial provocations at the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, including the straw that broke the camel’s back: two days before Al-Aqsa Flood, on 5 October, at least 800 Israeli settlers launched an assault around the mosque,beating pilgrims, destroying Palestinian shops, all under the observation of Israeli security forces.

Everyone with a functioning brain knows Al-Aqsa is a definitive red line, not just for Palestinians, but for the entire Arab and Muslim worlds. 

It gets worse. The Israelis have now invoked the rhetoric of a “Pearl Harbor.” This is as threatening as it gets. The original Pearl Harbor was the American excuse to enter a world war and nuke Japan, and this “Pearl Harbor” may be Tel Aviv’s justification to launch a Gaza genocide.  

Sections of the west applauding the upcoming ethnic cleansing – including Zionists posing as “analysts” saying out loud that the “population transfers” that began in 1948 “must be completed” – believe that with massive weaponry and massive media coverage, they can turn things around in short shrift, annihilate the Palestinian resistance, and leave Hamas allies like Hezbollah and Iran weakened. 

Their Ukraine Project has sputtered, leaving not just egg on powerful faces, but entire European economies in ruin. Yet as one door closes, another one opens: Jump from ally Ukraine to ally Israel, and hone your sights on adversary Iran instead of adversary Russia.  

There are other good reasons to go all guns blazing. A peaceful West Asia means Syria reconstruction – in which China is now officially involved; active redevelopment for Iraq and Lebanon; Iran and Saudi Arabia as part of BRICS 11; the Russia-China strategic partnership fully respected and interacting with all regional players, including key US allies in the Persian Gulf.

Incompetence. Willful strategy. Or both.

That brings us to the cost of launching this new “war on terror.” The propaganda is in full swing. For Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Hamas is ISIS. For Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev, Hamas is Russia. Over one October weekend, the war in Ukraine was completely forgotten by western mainstream media. Brandenburg Gate, the Eiffel tower, the Brazilian Senate are all Israeli now. 

Egyptian intel claims it warned Tel Aviv about an imminent attack from Hamas. The Israelis chose to ignore it, as they did the Hamas training drills they observed in the weeks prior, smug in their superior knowledge that Palestinians would never have the audacity to launch a liberation operation.

Whatever happens next, Al-Aqsa Flood has already, irretrievably, shattered the hefty pop mythology around the invincibility of Tsahal, Mossad, Shin Bet, Merkava tank, Iron Dome, and the Israel Defense Forces. 

Even as it ditched electronic communications, Hamas profited from the glaring collapse of Israel’s multi-billion-dollar electronic systems monitoring the most surveilled border on the planet. 

Cheap Palestinian drones hit multiple sensor towers, facilitated the advance of a paragliding infantry, and cleared the way for T-shirted, AK-47-wielding assault teams to inflict breaks in the wall and cross a border that even stray cats dared not. 

Israel, inevitably, turned to battering the Gaza Strip, an encircled cage of 365 square kilometers packed with 2.3 million people. The indiscriminate bombing of refugee camps, schools, civilian apartment blocks, mosques, and slums has begun. Palestinians have no navy, no air force, no artillery units, no armored fighting vehicles, and no professional army. They have little to no high-tech surveillance access, while Israel can call up NATO data if they want it. 

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant proclaimed “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly.”

The Israelis can merrily engage in collective punishment because, with three guaranteed UNSC vetoes in their back pocket, they know they can get away with it. 

It doesn’t matter that Haaretz, Israel’s most respected newspaper, straight out concedes that “actually the Israeli government is solely responsible for what happened (Al-Aqsa Flood) for denying the rights of Palestinians.”

The Israelis are nothing if not consistent. Back in 2007, then-Israeli Defense Intelligence Chief Amos Yadlin said, “Israel would be happy if Hamas took over Gaza because IDF could then deal with Gaza as a hostile state.” 

Ukraine funnels weapons to Palestinians

Only one year ago, the sweaty sweatshirt comedian in Kiev was talking about turning Ukraine into a “big Israel,” and was duly applauded by a bunch of Atlantic Council bots. 

Well, it turned out quite differently. As an old-school Deep State source just informed me:

“Ukraine-earmarked weapons are ending up in the hands of the Palestinians. The question is which country is paying for it. Iran just made a deal with the US for six billion dollars and it is unlikely Iran would jeopardize that. I have a source who gave me the name of the country but I cannot reveal it. The fact is that Ukrainian weapons are going to the Gaza Strip and they are being paid for but not by Iran." 

After its stunning raid last weekend, a savvy Hamas has already secured more negotiating leverage than Palestinians have wielded in decades. Significantly, while peace talks are supported by China, Russia, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt - Tel Aviv refuses. Netanyahu is obsessed with razing Gaza to the ground, but if that happens, a wider regional war is nearly inevitable. 

Lebanon’s Hezbollah – a staunch Resistance Axis ally of the Palestinian resistance - would rather not be dragged into a war that can be devastating on its side of the border, but that could change if Israel perpetrates a de facto Gaza genocide. 

Hezbollah holds at least 100,000 ballistic missiles and rockets, from Katyusha (range: 40 km) to Fajr-5 (75 km), Khaibar-1 (100 km), Zelzal 2 (210 km), Fateh-110 (300 km), and Scud B-C (500 km). Tel Aviv knows what that means, and shudders at the frequent warnings by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah that its next war with Israel will be conducted inside that country.   

Which brings us to Iran. 

Geopolitical plausible deniability

The key immediate consequence of Al-Aqsa Flood is that the Washington neocon wet dream of “normalization” between Israel and the Arab world will simply vanish if this turns into a Long War.

Large swathes of the Arab world in fact are already normalizing their ties with Tehran – and not only inside the newly expanded BRICS 11. 

In the drive towards a multipolar world, represented by BRICS 11, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), among other groundbreaking Eurasian and Global South institutions, there’s simply no place for an ethnocentric Apartheid state fond of collective punishment.    

Just this year, Israel found itself disinvited from the African Union summit. An Israeli delegation showed up anyway, and was unceremoniously ejected from the big hall, a visual that went viral. At the UN plenary sessions last month, a lone Israeli diplomat sought to disrupt Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi’s speech. No western ally stood by his side, and he too, was ejected from the premises. 

As Chinese President Xi Jinping diplomatically put it in December 2022, Beijing “firmly supports the establishment of an independent state of Palestine that enjoys full sovereignty based on 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital. China supports Palestine in becoming a full member of the United Nations.”

Tehran’s strategy is way more ambitious – offering strategic advice to West Asian resistance movements from the Levant to the Persian Gulf: Hezbollah, Ansarallah, Hashd al-Shaabi, Kataib Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and countless others. It’s as if they are all part of a new Grand Chessboard de facto supervised by Grandmaster Iran. 

The pieces in the chessboard were carefully positioned by none other than the late Quds Force Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qassem Soleimani, a once-in-a-lifetime military genius. He was instrumental in creating the foundations for the cumulative successes of Iranian allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Palestine, as well as creating the conditions for a complex operation such as Al-Aqsa Flood. 

Elsewhere in the region, the Atlanticist drive of opening strategic corridors across the Five Seas - the Caspian, the Black Sea, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Eastern Mediterranean - is floundering badly. 

Russia and Iran are already smashing US designs in the Caspian – via the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) – and the Black Sea, which is on the way to becoming a Russian lake. Tehran is paying very close attention to Moscow’s strategy in Ukraine, even as it refines its own strategy on how to debilitate the Hegemon without direct involvement: call it geopolitical plausible deniability.   

Bye bye EU-Israel-Saudi-India corridor

The Russia-China-Iran alliance has been demonized as the new “axis of evil” by western neocons. That infantile rage betrays cosmic impotence. These are Real Sovereigns that can’t be messed with, and if they are, the price to pay is unthinkable. 

A key example: if Iran under attack by a US-Israeli axis decided to block the Strait of Hormuz, the global energy crisis would skyrocket, and the collapse of the western economy under the weight of quadrillions of derivatives would be inevitable. 

What this means, in the immediate future, is that he American Dream of interfering across the Five Seas does not even qualify as a mirage. Al-Aqsa Flood has also just buried the recently-announced and much-ballyhooed EU-Israel-Saudi Arabia-India transportation corridor. 

China is keenly aware of all this incandescence taking place only a week before its 3rd Belt and Road Forum in Beijing. At stake are the BRI connectivity corridors that matter – across the Heartland, across Russia, plus the Maritime Silk Road and the Arctic Silk Road. 

Then there’s the INSTC linking Russia, Iran and India – and by ancillary extension, the Gulf monarchies. 

The geopolitical repercussions of Al-Aqsa Flood will speed up Russia, China and Iran’s interconnected geoeconomic and logistical connections, bypassing the Hegemon and its Empire of Bases. Increased trade and non-stop cargo movement are all about (good) business. On equal terms, with mutual respect - not exactly the War Party’s scenario for a destabilized West Asia.  

Oh, the things that a slow-moving paragliding infantry overflying a wall can accelerate.  

https://new.thecradle.co/articles/the-geopolitics-of-al-aqsa-flood

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By As’ad AbuKhalil
Special to Consortium News

The Hamas attack (with the loss of civilian lives) shook the Middle East and shattered many assumptions and misconceptions about the region.

It’s not that Israel was shocked at the daring nature of the attack, but that Israel had long assumed that the Palestinian problem is dead and that there is no need to engage in a so-called peace process — even if managed by the U.S., the least neutral party in the Arab-Israeli conflict outside of Tel Aviv.

Reflecting the belief in the death of Palestine as a question, the Biden administration was the first U.S. administration since Lyndon Johnson to not even attempt to launch a peace process regarding the Palestinian problem, demonstrating its belief that the issue is over.  

Joe Biden fully subscribed to the Jared Kushner school of thought and diplomacy, which believes Arabs don’t care anymore about Palestine and Israel can simply reach peace agreements with individual Arab states, after which Arab public opinion would follow. Little is being said about Biden adopting Kushner’s view of Middle East politics, which makes Palestine irrelevant in U.S. foreign policy in the region.

But there are historical roots to this view. In 1985, American supporters of Israel (with ties to the Israeli lobby, AIPAC) founded the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). I was in D.C. at the time and the organization was regarded as a small shop which was unlikely to cause an impact in a city teeming with think tanks and research centers.

Furthermore, the Institute was regarded as too pro-Israel to be able to emerge as an influential think tank. Most of the Middle East-oriented centers had a pro-Arab bent (pro-Arab in the conservative sense of the Arabists who were close to oil companies, arms industry and Gulf embassies). Gulf embassies were then opposed to AIPAC because it opposed their arm purchases’ requests, and Gulf regimes were, at least publicly, advocating on behalf of the Palestinian people.

The Arabists controlled several influential centers and organizations, like the American Educational Trust (which published the once influential Washington Report on Middle East Affairs), the Middle East Institute, National Organization of Arab Americans, among others. The Arabists were mostly retired U.S. foreign service officers who believed that U.S. foreign policy neededto be “even-handed”.

This view was associated with the Republican Party before the Reagan “revolution.” At first, the Washington Institute would be invited to represent the Israeli point of view, and not to provide “objective” analysis of the region.

I remember in Washington, that I would be paired often with Robert Satloff (the current WINEP director) in debates on TV and radio. Once, a WINEP expert was cited in The New York Times but the writer (Jane Parlez) did not identify the institute — as was standard at the time — as a pro-Israel think tank. I called the reporter and complained and she agreed with me and said she normally identifies as such.

Today, almost daily, newspapers in the U.S. and Europe carry analysis about the Middle East by experts of the Institute, but without identifying the organization as pro-Israel and close to the Israel lobby. 

But the Washington Middle East scene later changed radically, especially with the advent of the Clinton administration. Clinton appointed Martin Indyk, who founded WINEP as the research arm of AIPAC, as his chief Middle East advisor (he did not have U.S. citizenship at the time and his papers were rushed in to meet the confirmation process).

The administration then cleansed all Arabists from the State Department and anybody who was identified as titling to the Arab point of view was sent to Siberian posts. The message was loud and clear: the U.S. government would no longer tolerate anybody daring to express the “Arab point of view” in the Arab-Israeli question.

That quickly elevated the status of the Washington Institute and many of its researchers served in high positions of government, especially at State and Defense. At least three of its “experts” served as assistant secretaries of state for the Near East (the top Middle East post at the Department of State). The reputation of the Institute as the organization which staffs Middle East posts at the National Security Council in the White House, State, and Defense grew.

Former diplomats flocked to serve as researchers in retirement, and serving diplomats would take a year of absence to serve as fellows. The Institute mixes Israeli and U.S. experts and would often bring a token Arab (Tahseen Bashir, spokesperson to Anwar Sadat told me he refused a generous offer by Indyk to serve as a fellow there.)

The premise of WINEP’s agenda of was that successive U.S. administrations paid too much attention to the Palestinian problem and to Arab public opinion.

Senior fellow Barry Rubin and others argued that Arab public opinion does not matter because governments that are friendly to the U.S. could take care of them, and that the Palestinian problem is not as central to Arabs as it was during Nasser’s days. The focus shifted to replicating the Camp David accords by encouraging bilateral negotiations and agreements between Arab despots and Israel.

After Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, the U.S. pushed the Lebanese government to sign a peace treaty with Israel (but it did not last and it was not ratified because a popular revolt forced its cancellation).

Another shift occurred in Washington at the same time. Gulf regimes changed their priorities after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and many of them entered into negotiations with Zionist organizations in D.C. Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia invited Zionist leaders to the Kingdom, when the antisemitic royal family did not even allow Jews to enter into the Kingdom.

Syrians and Lebanese entered into direct peace negotiations with Israel, but Israel, typically, did not accommodate Arab demands because it viewed the parties as weak protagonists. Gulf countries, on their own, made their relationships with Israel less secret (Saudi Arabia cooperated with Israel in the Yemen war of the 1960s).

WINEP pushed the U.S. administration (with the full support of Congress, which reflects AIPAC’s view of the Middle East) to ignore the Palestinian question, or to bury it in the Oslo accords and process. Yasser Arafat went to Ramallah where the U.S. later allowed Israel to kill him. Israel never respected the terms of the Oslo accords and the lands that were supposed to be liberated were in fact under a tighter and more brutal occupation as the settlements grew.

There was always the fig leaf for the occupation: the U.S.-led peace process, which supposedly (since 1970) was working for a comprehensive peace between Arabs and Israelis. The peace process was a mere U.S. (and European) cover for Israel to continue to occupy and commit aggression while spreading the fantasy of a deal being worked out behind closed doors. The U.S. was never serious about reaching a comprehensive settlement and colonial mindsets expected the Palestinian national flame to be extinguished by force.

Kushner did not see the need for a peace process and WINEP agreed (the chief Middle East expert at State was a graduate of WINEP in the Trump administration). Instead, Kushner thought that WINEP’s plan was brilliant: Palestine is not politically salient and Gulf regimes could willingly reach peace treaties with Israel in return for advanced weapons and U.S. praise.

Furthermore, Gulf regimes were finding that military and intelligence cooperation with Israel was beneficial for internal repression (Israeli technology was (and is) used to spy on and hunt down dissidents in those countries).

The Gaza breakout was a forceful message (albeit violent and resulting in the deaths of civilians) that Palestinian militants wanted to assert (on behalf of most Palestinians, actually) that the Palestinian problem is here to say and that no normalization deal can smash Palestinian national aspirations.

That message would have been stronger had the lives of civilians been spared, although if the killing of only Israeli occupation soldiers at the hand of Palestinians is also considered terrorism by the West).

The U.S. wanted to believe that its well-armed despots could subjugate their own population as well as the Palestinians if they were to protest the normalization trends.

But the Palestinians often engage in revolts against Arab governments themselves when they feel their hands are tied; and Hamas (regardless of one’s view of it, especially the view of secularists) is not a mere tool of Iran despite Iranian arming and financing of Hamas.

Hamas broke with Iran, and even with Hizbullah, after 2011 when it supported the Syrian rebels against the regime. It was only recently that the reconciliation between Hizbullah and Hamas was completed.

There was a Palestinian liberation movement before the PLO, and after the PLO; and there was a liberation movement before Hamas and will be after, although the path of liberation for Palestinians seems shorter than ever, or so many Arabs believe.

As`ad AbuKhalil is a Lebanese-American professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He is the author of the Historical Dictionary of Lebanon (1998), Bin Laden, Islam and America’s New War on Terrorism (2002), The Battle for Saudi Arabia (2004) and ran the popular The Angry Arab blog. He tweets as @asadabukhalil

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/10/12/how-a-dc-think-tank-helped-cause-the-gaza-deluge/

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