Israeli Officials Whine That Netanyahu Is Avoiding Ceasefire Deal On Purpose (As If This Was a Secret)

ANDREW ANGLIN

It’s starting to look like the entire war effort in Israel, the entire Netanyahu agenda, is riding on the US presidential election.

With the number of high level officials in Israel now flipping out over the war effort and claiming that Netanyahu is insane and out of control, hellbent on destruction like a death metal song, it feels like US Jews have some chance of doing a real coup against Bibi.

Reuters:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing anger in Israel and abroad over his handling of talks on a Gaza ceasefire that have faltered, just as fears have grown that the crisis could spiral into war with Iran, three Israeli officials said.

Divisions between Netanyahu and the defence establishment over a deal, which could help defuse the escalating crisis that risks engulfing the Middle East, have also surfaced in public remarks and behind closed doors, in angry exchanges leaked on Saturday to the Israeli press.

Well, he assassinated the main negotiator for Hamas in about the most extreme and incendiary way possible.

I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say the negotiations are being purposefully torpedoed when the negotiator is assassinated and Bibi is saying there will never be negotiations.

The entire context of the media discussion of negotiations is confusing, given that the official policy of the Israeli state is that they are opposed to negotiations on principle.

Over the past four weeks three Israeli officials, one on the negotiating team and two with close knowledge of the talks, have voiced concern that politics was undermining the chances of a deal.

“The feeling is that the prime minister is avoiding making a decision about the deal and is not pushing for it full force,” one of the officials told Reuters on Sunday.

Tensions between Netanyahu – who insists he is safeguarding Israel’s security – and some in his negotiating team were laid bare in his public remarks on Sunday.

“I am prepared to go very far to release all of our hostages, while maintaining the security of Israel,” Netanyahu said in televised remarks at his cabinet meeting.

“Our commitment stands in complete contrast to the leaks and mendacious briefings on the issue of our hostages.”

To some extent, he is talking out of both sides of his mouth. Probably, he could just disband the negotiation team completely. He presumably has that power. But he let’s it remain as a favor to Joe Biden, basically, while constantly stating publicly that negotiations can never happen and assassinating the negotiator.

It’s a really weird dynamic.

Efforts by the United States, Egypt and Qatar to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas had gained momentum over July but have since ground to a near halt after new terms were introduced to an agreed framework presented by Washington in May.

…

Netanyahu’s remarks came in response to a flurry of reports over the weekend. One, by N12 News, quoted U.S. President Joe Biden telling Netanyahu in their Thursday phone call to “stop bullshitting me” about advancing the talks.

A second N12 report cited Israeli security chiefs, including Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and the head of the Shin Bet domestic security service Ronen Bar, casting doubt during a Wednesday meeting on Netanyahu’s commitment to a hostage deal.

Gallant, according to the report, told Netanyahu that the new terms he introduced have made a deal impossible. The Shin Bet declined to comment on closed-door discussions. Gallant’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Macgregor is right: Bibi is attempting to establish a total Israeli hegemon in the region.

That was really what was at the core of the Abraham Accords in the first place. This basically allowed all of the Arabs to come pay tribute to Israel in a way that was supposedly beneficial to their economies and national interests.

But those Accords were not good enough, because Palestine and Hamas and Iran still exist. So Bibi wants to do this big war, to clean out Palestine, destroy Hezbollah and maybe occupy parts of Southern Lebanon, and also somehow completely neutralize Iran. He wants to use the support of the United States, while he still has it, to make this happen. There was a logic to it.

Unfortunately, none of it appears to be working out all that well. Given that Israel has yet to actually invade Lebanon, and hasn’t destroyed Hamas or started aggressively expelling people from the West Bank, things are not unfolding as planned.

There is no real benefit of the plan to US Jews, who would rather just maintain the status quo and try to bribe Iran while they work on doing a vagina revolution in the country.

It’s all pretty much riding on the US presidential election. If Trump “wins,” everything goes full-Bibi, whereas if Kamala “wins,” US intelligence officials will probably work with various Israeli parties to overthrow Bibi.

https://www.unz.com/aanglin/israeli-officials-whine-that-netanyahu-is-avoiding-ceasefire-deal-on-purpose-as-if-this-was-a-secret/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

Matthew Knott

Foreign affairs correspondent

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has slammed Iran’s ambassador to Australia for declaring Israel should be wiped out while declining to back his removal from the country as Israel braces for Iranian retaliation following the killing of Hamas’ political leader.

Albanese said Iranian ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi had been ‘‘called in’’ for a rebuke for using social media to call Israel a ‘‘Zionist plague’’ and describe Hamas’ commitment to the ‘‘wiping out’’ of Israel by 2027 as a ‘‘heavenly and divine promise’’.

Albanese decried the comments as ‘‘abhorrent’’, ‘‘hateful’’ and ‘‘antisemitic’’ while Foreign Minister Penny Wong labelled them ‘‘repugnant’’ and ‘‘inflammatory’’.

‘‘We have called in the Iranian ambassador to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. [That] is the protocol when something like this happens,’’ Albanese said yesterday.

‘‘What we’ve done, we’ve made clear our view to the Iranian ambassador very clearly and unequivocally to send him a message that it’s entirely inappropriate for him to engage in that way.’’

The opposition urged the government to go further and investigate whether Sadeghi’s comments breached Australia’s hate speech laws.

‘‘Calling it out as repugnant is good, but there is action required and that is why the government needs to step forward and outline what it is doing and why it has determined on those steps,’’ opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham told Sky News.

Birmingham said there was a case for the government to examine invoking Article 9 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which enables it to declare a foreign diplomat persona non grata in Australia.

But the government has given no indication it will do so. Wong said in a press conference in Washington DC: ‘‘More broadly, obviously, you know, we maintain a diplomatic relationship with Iran because we seek to further Australia’s interests.

‘‘That is why we continue to engage, including in relation, as you know, to the importance of deescalation given the circumstances we face in the Middle East.’’

Liberal senator Claire Chandler said she had raised concerns about the ambassador’s inflammatory social media posts with Wong at Senate estimates hearings since last October. This included a post in which Sadeghi suggested Israelis could be relocated to Birobidzhan, a Jewish autonomous region near the Russia-China border.

As Israel braced for retaliatory attacks from Iran and its proxies, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Middle East had reached a ‘‘critical moment’’ as the US and other nations seek to avoid all-out regional war.

‘‘We are engaged in intense diplomacy – pretty much round the clock – with a very simple message: All parties must refrain from escalation, all parties must take steps to ease tensions,’’ Blinken said.

US intelligence officials reportedly briefed President Joe Biden that Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel was likely to take place in two waves, one from Iran and the other by Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies in Lebanon.

Iran and Hezbollah were infuriated by last week’s killing of Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh during a visit to Tehran and the killing of Hezbollah military chief Fuad Shukr in Beirut.

Israel has taken responsibility for the death of Shukr but not of Haniyeh.

‘‘These are dangerous times,’’ Albanese said, reflecting on the possibility of a wider war in the Middle East.

‘‘I reiterate my call for Australians who are in Lebanon to come home while commercial flights are available, and reiterate with an exclamation mark that Australians shouldn’t continue to travel to Lebanon.’’

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton called for the government to reexamine funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees after a UN investigation found nine employees were probably involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.

All nine employees had been fired, the UN said.

‘‘It’s completely and utterly unacceptable that a UN agency would have employees involved in, or alleged to have been involved in, the October 7 tragedy,’’ Dutton said.

The government paused funding for UNRWA in January when the allegations of staff member involvement in the October 7 attacks emerged, but resumed funding in March, saying that no other agency could act as a substitute for vital humanitarian assistance.

‘‘It is a good thing that the United Nations have taken this action,’’ Albanese said.

‘‘We know that the events of October 7 were appalling, and we unequivocally condemn them, as would all who value human life.’’

In its campaign since October 7, Israel has killed more than 39,363 Palestinians and wounded almost 91,000, according to the Hamasrun Gaza health ministry.

SMH 07/08/2024

ACCORDING TO THE LANCET, THE DEATH TOLL IS ABOVE 180,000

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net

The reported death toll in Gaza is way too low by every imaginable metric. We need to be stressing this — all the more so when Israel’s apologists are vigorously engaged in a disinformation campaign to suggest that the figures are inflated.

On May 6, seven months into Israel’s slaughter, there were reported to be 34,735 dead. That was an average of 4,960 Palestinians killed each month.

Today, nearly three months on, the reported death toll stands at 39,400 — or an increase of 4,665.

It should not need a statistician to point out that, were the rise linear, the expected number of deaths would stand by this point at around 49,600.

So, even by the simplest calculation, there is a large shortfall in deaths — a shortfall that needs explaining.

Such an explanation is easy to provide: Israel destroyed Gaza’s institutions and its medical infrastructure, including its hospitals, many months ago, making it impossible for officials there to keep track of how many Palestinians are being killed by Israel.

The death toll figures started to stall in the spring, around the time Israel completed its destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and kidnapped much of the enclave’s medical personnel.

More than a month ago, Save the Children pointed out that some 21,000 children in Gaza were missing, in addition to the 16,000 known to have been killed by Israel. Many are likely to have suffered lonely, terrifying deaths under rubble — gradually suffocated to death, or dying slowly from dehydration.

But again, even those shocking figures are likely to be a severe undercount.

The linear figure entirely misses the bigger picture. How?

1. Because in addition to the continuing Israeli bombardments, Palestinians have had to endure three more months of an intensifying famine. With each day of a famine, more people die than died the day before. 

The deaths in a famine are not linear, they are exponential. If five people died yesterday of starvation, 20 people will die today, and 150 tomorrow. That is how prolonged famines work. The longer you are starved, the higher the probability you will die of starvation.

2. Because Palestinians have had three more months deprived of medical care after Israel destroyed their hospitals and medical institutions. If you have a chronic illness — diabetes, asthma, kidney problems, high blood pressure, and so on — the longer you are forced to go without medical attention, the greater the chance you will die from an untreated condition. Again, the death rate in such circumstances is exponential, not linear.

3. Because without medical care, all sorts of other things that happen in everyday life become more dangerous. Childbirth is the most obvious example, but even cuts and grazes can become a death sentence. So given the fact that Palestinians now have even less access to medical care than they had in the first six months of Israel’s war on Gaza suggests that people are being killed by life-events in even greater numbers than was the case earlier in Israel’s slaughter.

4. Because, for exactly the same reasons, those injured by Israel’s continuing bombardments are likely to have poorer outcomes than those similarly injured in earlier attacks. Fewer doctors means less chance of treatment, means greater chance of dying from your wounds.

5. Because we know that — given the insanitary conditions, the lack of water and food, the weakened health status of the population, and the destruction of hospitals — epidemics now are breaking out. The WHO has already warned of a likely outbreak of polio, but there are sure to be other diseases emerging such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery that have yet to be isolated and identified. Even the common cold can become a killer when people’s health status is this compromised.

A letter from researchers to The Lancet medical journal last month warned about the likely massive undercount of the dead in Gaza, even relying, as they had to, on the established death toll.

Their point was that indirect deaths — of the kind I enumerate above — need to be factored in as well as the direct deaths from Israeli bombs. 

They very conservatively estimate that the total number who will die over the coming months — not just from bombs but as a result of the lack of medical care, insanitary conditions and famine — is 186,000, or 8 percent of the population.

But that figure assumes that Israel’s current slaughter and starvation policies come to an immediate halt, and that international organisations are able to bring in emergency aid. There are precisely no signs that Israel is going to allow any of that to happen — or that Western states are going to put any pressure on Israel to do so.

The medical researchers suggest a less conservative estimate could ultimately put the death toll in Gaza nearer 600,000, or a quarter of the population. Again, that assumes Israel reverses course immediately.

Remember too that for every person killed, several others are maimed or badly wounded. According to the current figures, more than 91,000 Palestinians are reported injured, many of them missing limbs. But again, that is likely to be a massive undercount too.

Harrowing as these figures are, they are just numbers. But Gaza’s dead are not numbers. They were human beings, half of them children, whose lives have been snuffed out, their potential erased forever, their loved ones left with an all-consuming grief. Many victims died alone in extreme pain, or endured unimaginable suffering.

None of their lives should be reduced to cold statistics on a graph. But if that is where we are,  and sadly it is, then at the very least we need to point out that the headline figures are a lie, that Israel’s barbarism is being grossly minimised, and that we are being lulled into a false sense complacency.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the U.K. in 2021.He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict: Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006), Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East(2008) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). If you appreciate his articles, please consider offering your financial support. 

This article is from the author’s blog, Jonathan Cook.net.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/06/israels-barbarism-is-grossly-minimised/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

    by Alastair Crooke

The signposts are there for all to read: The West – in deliberately overlooking such explicit markers – cannot then complain, or escape, the ensuing consequences.

No, the “tin ear” is not some new western derangement – a unique mass collapse of sanity – that we are living through. It is something worse: a return to a dogmatic, authoritarian version of truth which dissident physicist Eric Weinstein complains has (in the West) also destroyed true science – ignoring and silencing its most important dissident voices, whilst amply rewarding Science’s frauds.

Consider: Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the US Congress on 24 July saying, in an unrelieved Manichaean mode, that the West is facing an “axis of evil” (Iran and allies), which the US must join in destroying. It was a call to participate in civilisational war.

His invitation was celebrated with 58 standing ovations from US legislators.

Netanyahu returned home to a disaster in the Druze community on the Golan. Missile fragments had struck, killing and wounding many children playing football (the exact circumstances are still not clear). Western rationality however is perfectly capable to deduce firstly, that Majdal Shams lies in Occupied Syria; secondly, that the Druze community there remains overwhelmingly Syrian (rejecting Israeli citizenship) and largely pro-Syrian. And that they are neither Jews nor Israelis. The West seemingly cannot however, adduce the further very obvious conclusion: Why on earth would Hizbullah intentionally attack a Syrian community on Syrian land that largely is sympathetic to the Resistance?

They wouldn’t. Yet these obvious facts are completely ignored by a rationality that, as Weinstein suggests, actively prefers fraud to truth. Spokesman Kirby said Hizbullah had attacked children in northern Israel.

Israel’s Defence minister repeatedly says: “We don’t want war.” Western leaders parrot the same meme: No-one wants war. “We are fully confident that Israel’s response will be constrained and limited to military targets.” The White House: “In our view, there is no reason for some dramatic escalation in southern Lebanon and there is still time and space for diplomacy.”

So what then occurs? Two major assassinations: one in Beirut and the other in Tehran (i.e. to a guest on Iranian sovereign territory). Western leaders express their “concern.” The Hamas target in Tehran, Ismail Haniyeh, as the Qatari PM noted, was the key Gaza hostage negotiator.

This too will be overlooked, though Netanyahu’s intent to weave together Hamas, Hizbullah and Iran into a single “axis of evil” cloth – thus speaking to his Join-Session of Congress thesis – must be evident even to a blinkered Washington.

Recall the new “equation” that followed the assassination of a senior IRGC official in the Iranian Consulate in April 2024: Henceforth Iran will respond directly – and directly from Iran. Washington says it does not want war with Iran, yet the latter explicitly was what Netanyahu advocated. Did the legislators miss his point?

For nearly ten months, Israel has been unable to stabilize the situation along the northern border and allow for the return of displaced Israelis to their homes. Even if the Beirut strike doesn’t lead to wider war, restoring a negotiated stability on the Lebanese border is now beyond reach – as is too, a Gaza hostage deal. “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side,” Qatari PM al-Thani ruefully observed.

So too “overlooked” in the West, will be that which happened in Israel on the same day the assassinations later took place: Right-wing vigilantes descended from their settlements, storming two military IDF bases. The anarchic scenes of mass break-ins, fomented by several members of the ruling coalition, some of whom took part in the forcible entries, sparked angry condemnation from Defence Minister Gallant.

The invasions were supported by one minister and several Knesset members seeking to free reservists that are suspected of aggravated abuse and forcible sodomy against a Palestinian detainee. According to a security source, the injured detainee was taken to a hospital with severe injuries, including to an intimate body part which left him unable to walk.

‘The spectacle of military police officers coming to arrest our best heroes at Sde Teiman is nothing less than shameful,’ said Ben Gvir, whose ministry controls the Israel Police and Israel Prison Service, said of the storming of the IDF post.

Yet the wider picture as related by Yossi Melman is:

What is happening on the part of the nationalistic messianic Right with the backing, winking or silence of ministers and MKs of the Right is a ‘putsch.’ The youth coming down from the hills of the ‘State of Judah’ to act with the same violent methods – used against the Palestinians – (but now) are being used against the state of Israel. MK Limor Son Har-Malech (Otzma Yehudit) said: ‘The people of Israel will fight against enemies from outside and enemies who try to destroy us at home’ [those such as the Advocate General seeking to investigate the torture being practiced Sde Teiman]. The concept of the knife in the back and the betrayal at home echoes the voices in Germany after WWII.

Again, overlooked but not in the news: The situation at Sde Teiman was widely-known and said to be “more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.” A UN report has detailed how Palestinians arbitrarily detained faced torture and mistreatment. The vigilantes from the settlements nevertheless described those committing the anal rape as “heroes” – and cast the IDF investigators as fifth columnists. Reports suggest that the perpetrators at Sde Teiman enjoy high level protection.

This account of systematic torture followed earlier revelations that the Israeli army had marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system, called Lavender, with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties.

In the same vein, Right wing Cabinet ministers celebrated the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on social media Wednesday morning, as: “This is the right way to purge the world of this filth,” Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, a member of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, tweeted:

No more imaginary ‘peace’/surrender agreements, no more mercy for these dead men walking. The iron fist that will strike them is the one that will bring quiet and a modicum of comfort, and strengthen our ability to live in peace with those who seek peace. Haniyeh’s death makes the world a slightly better place.

What then is this “truth” that the West ignores and silences reality, whilst amplifying its narrative frauds? It is that the Israel which they presume to understand is now something very different. And that it has an epistemology at odds with mechanistic rationalism.

An eschatological Right-wing cult now holds the majority in cabinet – and wields a vigilante militia ready to attack the military establishment, and the Israeli state. No one was arrested for the attack and take-over of the two bases. They do not dare.

Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, who also served as Israel’s Defence Minister, had this to say in a video interview on the forces taking over in Israel:

When you talk about Smotrich and Ben Gvir: They have a Rabbi. His name is Dov Lior. He is the Rabbi of the Jewish Underground, who intended to blow up the Dome of the Rock – and before that the buses in Jerusalem. Why? In order to hurry up the ‘Last War.’ Do you [not] hear them talking in terms of the Last War; or of Smotrich’s concept of ‘subjugation’? Read the article he published in Shiloh in 2017. First of all, this concept rests on Jewish supremacy: Mein Kampf in reverse.

My hair stands on end when I say that – as he said it. I learned and grew up in the house of Holocaust survivors and ‘never again.’ It is Mein Kampf in reverse: Jewish supremacy: and therefore [Smotrich] says: ‘My wife won’t go into a room with an Arab.’ It is anchored in ideology. And then actually what he aspires to – as soon as possible – is to go to a big war. A war of Gog and Magog. How do you start the flames? A massacre like the [1994] Cave of the Patriarchs? Baruch Goldstein is a student of this Rabbi. Ben Gvir has hung up Goldstein’s picture [in his house].

This is what goes into the decision-making process in the Israeli government.

Rabbi Dov Lior has been described by Netanyahu as the “élite unit that leads Israel,” because of his influence and control over the settler forces. The 1948 Irgun, drawing heavily on the Mizrahim, is being reborn?

Isn’t it time that the western ruling structures raised their eyes from their reverie, and read the runes that manifest all around them? Some serious players don’t think as you westerners do; they seek Gog and Magog (the prophecy that “the children of Israel” will be victorious in the battle of Armageddon). That is what you risk.

Reprinted from Strategic Culture Foundation.

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/the-1948-irgun-re-born/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

More than 100 Palestinians have been killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli air strike on a Gazan school, according to local media.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has confirmed they attacked the school, but claimed it was harbouring Hamas militants.

Ceasefire talks between Israel and its adversaries are expected to resume next week.

At least 100 Palestinians have been killed and dozens have been wounded in an Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced people in the Daraj district of eastern Gaza city.

"The Israeli strikes targeted the displaced people while performing Fajr (dawn) prayers, and this is what led to a rapid increase in the number of casualties," the Gaza government media office said in a statement.

Medics had not yet been able to reach all the bodies, it said.

A statement from Gaza's civil defence agency described the strike as a "horrific massacre" with some bodies catching fire.

"Three Israeli rockets hit the school that was housing displaced Palestinians," agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.

Ismail Al-Thawabta, director general of the Gaza government media office, said the strike "resulted in more than 100 martyrs and dozens of injuries, most of which are in severe and critical condition".

He added that the number of causalities is likely to rise as al-Ahli Hospital, where the wounded were taken, struggles to cope with the severe injuries.

He told Al Jazeera News that the Israeli army used three 2,000-pound bombs in its air strike.

Gaza government media sources said the school was housing about 250 people, half of them women and children.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed on X that they had attacked the Al-Tabi'een school in the Daraj neighbourhood, but claimed it was harbouring Hamas militants.

It said it struck a Hamas "command and control centre" that was "embedded" in the school "which is used as a shelter for the residents of Gaza City."

"The headquarters was used by the terrorists of the terrorist organisation Hamas to hide and from there they planned and promoted terrorist operations against the IDF forces and the citizens of the State of Israel," the IDF said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-10/more-than-100-palestinians-killed-in-israeli-air-strike/104209574

THE IDF LIES... AND BOMBS SCHOOLS......

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

Penny Wong condemns Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich comment that starving Palestinians may be justified

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has condemned comments by a senior Israeli minister suggesting it may be justified to starve Palestinians in Gaza.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was attending a conference in support of Jewish settlements when he made the statement.

Talks continue over a proposed ceasefire and hostage agreement, with the White House urging Israel and Hamas to reach a deal. 

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has condemned comments by a senior Israeli minister after he suggested it "might be just and moral" to starve Palestinians in Gaza until hostages held by Hamas are returned. 

Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made the statement at a conference in support of Jewish settlements on Monday, saying the country had no choice but to send humanitarian aid to Gaza. 

"It's not possible in today's global reality to manage a war — no one will allow us to starve two million people, even though that might be just and moral until they return the hostages," he said in a speech.

In a post to social media platform X on Saturday, Ms Wong said Australia joins international partners, including the UK, Germany and France, in condemning Mr Smotrich's comments.

"The deliberate starvation of civilians is a war crime," she wrote. 

"There is no justification for it, ever.

"An immediate ceasefire in Gaza has never been more urgent, to protect civilians, see hostages released, and enable aid to flow.

"We repeat our call on all parties to agree to an immediate ceasefire."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-10/penny-wong-condemns-bezalel-smotrich-comments/104209522

CONDEMN ISRAHELL AS A WHOLE, PENNY.....

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.