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The Israel Defense Forces criticized the far-right Channel 14 TV network for a clip the station broadcasted on Tuesday that made fun of IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi. The military accused the channel of “inflammatory and defamatory content that harms the IDF.”
The video made fun of an incident in which Halevi, while visiting Golani Brigade troops in southern Lebanon, removed a velcro patch from a soldier’s sleeve on which was written “Messiah.” These have become popular among some religious soldiers during the war.
The patches are associated with Messianic fundamentalist Jewish beliefs, and Halevi told the soldier that, while he was free to keep the patch in his shirt pocket, only official IDF insignia could be presented externally.
News of Halevi reprimanding a soldier for the badge, reportedly not for the first time, angered some in right-wing circles — despite the fact that soldiers are generally bound by strict uniform regulations and have long been prohibited from displaying messages on their fatigues.
The Channel 14 animated clip portrayed Halevi seeing the patch, causing his eyes to engorge and for him to start screaming in agony. Halevi has been the object of much criticism from some Netanyahu supporters since the war broke out on October 7 last year, with certain voices accusing him of weakness and a lack of resolve in the face of the Hamas and Hezbollah threats.
Some commenters on social media criticized the clip, saying Channel 14 was serving enemy interests by portraying Halevi in such a manner.
“I am contacting you following the video published last night on Channel 14, which included inflammatory and defamatory content that harms the IDF. It is inconceivable that a media channel in the State of Israel platforms inflammatory content against the IDF during war,” read a letter addressed to the network by IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.
Hagari wrote that the military “does not fear criticism and even encourages an open and sharp public discourse” on the IDF amid the war.
“However, the content that was broadcast yesterday on Channel 14 crosses a red line. This is deliberate incitement and humiliation of the IDF and its commanders during war. Unfortunately, this is not the first time Channel 14 has taken such actions toward the IDF,” the letter continued.
The IDF said it expects the network to delete the content.
The letter was also sent to the Second Authority for Television and Radio, a key regulatory and licensing body for commercial broadcasting in Israel, as well as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi.
Karhi, a hardliner from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, wrote a post on X aimed at Hagari, calling on him to rescind the letter.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-censures-right-wing-tv-network-for-mockery-of-military-chief/
Hours before Israel struck Iran over the weekend, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant sent a harshly-worded missive to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning that Israel’s war efforts had become aimless and needed to be refocused given regional developments in the past year, Hebrew media reported Sunday.
News of the letter, reportedly also sent to most cabinet ministers and top officials from the military, Mossad spy agency and Shin Bet security service, came as a report emerged that Netanyahu had promised political allies he would jettison Gallant once Israel attacked Iran.
In the communique, Gallant argued that Israel was fighting according to an “outdated compass” and that Jerusalem needed to revise its official war aims initially set following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, according to Channel 13 news.
“Significant developments in the war, especially Israel and Iran trading direct blows, raise the necessity of holding a discussion and updating the war’s goals with a comprehensive look” at the areas of fighting and the interconnections between them, Gallant reportedly wrote.
While Israel initially set its war goals as the destruction of the Hamas terror group and the return of hostages taken during the onslaught of southern Israel over a year ago, the fighting has since expanded significantly due to attacks by Iranian proxies and Iran itself, with Israel saying it is actually fighting a seven-front war.
Israel updated its goals to include the return of northern residents to their homes before sharply intensifying attacks on the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon last month.
Gallant was said to advocate adding the following war aims: in the West Bank, “preventing an outbreak of violence by thwarting terrorism”; in Iran, “deterrence and keeping Iran out of the war”; and in Gaza, “establishing a reality with no military threat, preventing the growth of terror capabilities, return of all the hostages and promotion of an alternative to the Hamas government.”
Israel’s current war aims call for the destruction of Hamas’s governing capability, but not for active promotion of any alternative. Gallant has publicly assailed Netanyahu on that point, urging the premier to rule out Israeli governance of Gaza after the war. By contrast, the government’s far-right flank has advocated for Israeli resettlement of the Strip.
Netanyahu’s office called Gallant’s letter “bizarre” in a response to Channel 13.
“There is a single compass, and that is the war aims as determined by the cabinet,” said the office.
“They are examined all the time, and have even been recently expanded,” it added.
Gallant’s opposition to Israeli rule of Gaza, and his support for a hostage-ceasefire deal there, have put him at odds with the coalition’s far-right flank, further stressing already frayed ties within the cabinet.
According to a Sunday report by the Kan public broadcaster, Netanyahu had told ultra-Orthodox party leaders that he would fire Gallant after Israel attacked Iran.
ERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli lawmakers passed two laws on Monday that could threaten the work of the main U.N. agency providing aid to people in Gaza by barring it from operating on Israeli soil, severing ties with it.
The laws, which do not immediately take effect, signal a new low for a long-troubled relationship between Israel and the U.N. Israel’s international allies said they were deeply worried about their potential impact on Palestinians as the Gaza war’s humanitarian toll worsens.
Under the first law, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, would be banned from conducting “any activity” or providing any service inside Israel. The second law would sever Israel’s diplomatic ties with the agency.
The laws risk collapsing the already fragile process for distributing aid in Gaza at a moment when Israel is under increased U.S. pressure to ramp up aid. UNRWA’s chief called them “a dangerous precedent.”
At least 93 people are dead or missing after an Israeli air strike on the town of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry says, in an attack that the United States called "horrifying".
Rescuers said a five-storey residential building was hit, and videos on social media showed bodies covered in blankets on the floor.
The Israeli military said it was "aware of reports that civilians were harmed today [Tuesday] in the Beit Lahia area". It added that the details of the incident were being looked into.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been operating in northern Gaza during the past two weeks, particularly in the areas of Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun.
The director of the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital in Jabalia, Hussam Abu Safia, told the AFP news agency that children were being treated at the hospital, which is struggling to treat patients due to a lack of staff and medicines.
"There is nothing left in the Kamal Adwan Hospital except first aid materials after the army arrested our medical team and workers," Abu Safia said.
The IDF raided the hospital last week, saying it was being used by Hamas fighters.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US was "deeply concerned by the loss of civilian life in this incident. This was a horrifying incident with a horrifying result".
He pointed to "reports of two dozen children killed" in the attack.
The "tragic cost to civilians" in the latest strike "is another reminder of why we need to see an end to this war", Miller said.
Israel says its operations in northern Gaza are designed to prevent Hamas from regrouping and accuses them of embedding among the civilian population, which Hamas denies.
In a statement on Tuesday, it said it killed 40 “terrorists” in Jabalia, and in central Gaza it said it “eliminated many terrorists" over the past 24 hours including some who "attempted to plant explosives near the troops".
The northern Gaza Strip faces a deepening humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people living in desperate conditions.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk said on Friday that "the Israeli military is subjecting an entire population to bombing, siege and risk of starvation".
He also said it was unacceptable that Palestinian armed groups were reportedly operating among civilians, including inside shelters for the displaced, and putting them in harm’s way.
On Monday, Israel's parliament voted through legislation to ban the UN's Palestinian refugee agency, Unrwa, from operating in the country, sparking warnings the delivery of aid to Gaza could be severely impacted..
Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group's unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
More than 42,924 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its figures.
Israel is not allowing international journalists from media organisations, including the BBC, independent access to Gaza, making it hard to verify facts on the ground.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clydngkv3xko
THE FACTS ON THE GROUND ARE FAR WORSE THAN WHAT IS DESCRIBED....
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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.
“It’s hard to do cartoons without being revolted…”
Gus Leonisky
- By Gus Leonisky at 30 Oct 2024 - 5:37pm
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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killing Lebanese people....
Lebanon's health ministry said at least 48 people were killed on Monday in Israeli raids on several areas in Baalbek in the eastern Bekaa Valley controlled by militant group Hezbollah. This comes after Israel's parliament banned UNRWA from operating in Israel and occupied east Jerusalem, despite objections from the international community. Read our live blog to see how the day's events unfolded.
This live blog is no longer being updated. For more coverage on the war in the Middle East, click here.
SUMMARYhttps://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20241028-live-un-security-council-to-hold-emergency-meeting-after-iran-request
SEE ALSO: his name comes down to us today.....
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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.
“It’s hard to do cartoons without shedding tears…”
Gus Leonisky
leaders? of the ......
“Medicide”: the killing fields of Gaza By Helen McCueHow much longer are the world’s leaders going to stand by and watch children being shredded to bits, doctors and nurses killed, arrested, detained and tortured, hospitals destroyed and schools bombed, the environment destroyed, humanitarian aid denied and a genocide committed in Gaza?
Do we have to remind our leaders again and again that this is real, not some dark dystopian event “over there?” This is Israel violating every United Nations humanitarian rule and rule of war in an ongoing apocalyptic genocide and telling the world that they can do as they like, no rules apply here.
A Commission of the UN’s Human Right’s Council in a report release on October 10th has found that Israel has implemented a deliberate policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system through its relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities, and that in doing so it is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. It found that “children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system.”
As yet more hospitals are attacked and destroyed, more health workers killed in what the UN special rapporteur on health Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng has this week called “medicide”, a new term to describe the widespread and systematic attacks by Israel on healthcare workers and facilities. “All of us continue to bear witness to the very practice of medicine being under attack,” she said. Emphasising that the right to health has become “untenable” amid relentless violence by Israel, she said that health workers are “exhausted, harassed, killed, [and] impeded from fulfilling their tasks as first responders.”
Dr Mofokeng’s comments come in the midst of a vicious, nearly three week long harrowing siege and yet more violent attacks on northern Gaza hospitals bringing the heath care system to the point of imminent collapse and killing more than 820 people most of these women and children. On Friday the IDF attacked, for the 14th time, the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few remaining hospitals in northern Gaza, inflicting severe damage to the hospital’s ICU, completely destroying its pharmacy and completely destroyed tents housing the displaced. Some 600 people, including 200 patients along with their relatives and hospital staff, were sheltering in the hospital at the time. During the assault the IDF detained 44 of the hospital’s 70-member team including the hospital’s director Dr Hussam Abu Safia. They were all humiliated, forced to strip to their underwear, handcuffed and ordered to sit in the sand and later taken away for interrogation. In another incident at the Al-Awda Hospital nearby, Dr Mohamed Obeid, head of the orthopedics department was also detained and his current location remains unknown.
Dr Obeid is among the numerous doctors who have been abducted, tortured and abused by the IDF as part of a ferocious attack on medical staff. We know that two doctors have also been killed under torture. Dr Adnan al-Bursh’s was killed in April while in Israeli custody, as reported by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society. Dr al-Bursh was head of orthopedic medicine at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and a Professor of orthopedic medicine. He was arrested in December last year from the al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza after refusing to leave patients who had been under heavy Israeli bombardment. Dr Iyad Rantisi, who was the director of Kamal Adwan hospital’s maternity department, also died from torture after being detained in November last year. Over this last year we know that Dr Muhammad al-Ran, Dr Khaled Siam, Dr Saeed Marouf and Dr Khaled Hamouda, among others, have also been arrested and tortured but have been released. Many of these doctors had been held at the notorious Sde Teiman military base detention centre in Israel where evidence of brutal torture including sexual abuse and rape have been reported.
This recent attack on Kamal Adwan Hospital is just one of many attacks that the IDF has committed against Gaza’s hospitals, especially more recently in the camps and villages of northern Gaza in Jabalia, Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and Saftawi. The Indonesian hospital, in the north Beit Lahiya, was also attacked a week ago and put out of service after the IDF shelled the upper floors of the hospital, despite the presence of over 40 patients and medical staff. The IDF stormed an adjacent school and then set fire resulting in the destruction of the hospital generators. The solar panels on the rooftop were also damaged, leaving the Indonesian Hospital without any source of power, including for lifelines such as incubators. The United Nations has been unable to reach northern Gaza with desperately needed water, food and medical supplies for Kamal Adwan, Indonesian and al-Awda hospital’s despite demanding access to allow aid in. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have faced severe food, water and medical shortage and extreme and brutal bombing following the siege imposed by the IDF over three weeks ago. And we know, on October 18th alone 20,000 people were forcibly removed and hundreds of thousands have left in fear of their lives in this ongoing ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza. Truck loads of men were also abducted and taken to unknown locations.
These attacks on the hospitals and health staff follow the same patterns we have seen in others areas of IDF operations in the south of Gaza. The names of Al Shifa, Al Quds and al Nasser hospitals are etched in our memories as places of both extraordinary courage and extreme and unimaginable suffering. Hospitals are sacred places, but in Gaza they are places of terror, of torture and abuse and worse by the IDF. They are meant to be places of treatment, of healing and of dignified dying. The IDF regularly violates these sacred places, bombing around them, bombing inside them, destroying them, killing patients including children, stopping food and water, fuel, oxygen and medical supplies necessary for treatment and to save lives. These hospitals, instead of being places of sanctuary, are the killing fields of Gaza, they are an extreme example of medicide.
In gross violation of the articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention, written specifically after WWII to protect civilians and health care workers, the IDF have killed just over 1,000 Palestinian health workers since October 7th last year. This includes doctors, nurses, pharmacists, support workers, ambulance drivers and first attenders. As of September 25th this year the WHO reported that there have been 516 attacks on health facilities, 32 out of 36 hospitals have been damaged, 115 ambulances have been affected and in total 110 health facilities damaged.
In what is yet another blow to Gaza’s health system, the Israelis have banned all foreign doctors from entering Gaza, no doubt because many of them have been witness to the genocide, to the deliberate targeting of children, many in the head, and other multiple war crimes committed in Gaza against civilians. The WHO says that this is the first time that Israel has banned foreign medical specialists from entering Gaza. This ban has impacted over 50 medical specialists who were due to travel to Gaza. The care provided by these medial support teams is irreplaceable as they are able to deal with complex medical and especially surgical trauma that is common. Some 30 percent of services have been affected by this denial. Many patients suffer form extreme blast injuries that require specialists surgical intervention. So if this service is not provided immediately patients will die a painful death due to infections from these injuries.
“This genocide has shown the incredible work that doctors, healthcare, and other care workers do in defending human rights; they are the oath takers, the ones who refused to leave and stayed caring for their patients, knowing their own fates.” Dr Mofokeng, who is South African, called on world leaders “to summon the economic, political, diplomatic power that they have to make sure that this genocide ends.”
The people of Gaza are enduring apocalyptic humanitarian conditions, destruction, mass killing, wounding, being burnt alive in their tents and irreparable trauma on a scale that is unimaginable and brutal while the world watches on in silence. When will western nations, the USA, UK, Germany et al, stop this vicious, barbaric Israeli killing machine and stop the genocide in Gaza? And when will Australia and its leaders summon the moral courage needed to sanction Israel, to stop their needed weapons spare parts production and to implement the ICJ rulings, instead of cowering in the southern seas pretending it’s not our problem?
https://johnmenadue.com/medicide-the-killing-fields-of-gaza/
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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.
“It’s hard to do cartoons without shedding tears…”
Gus Leonisky
you're fired!....
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, citing “significant gaps” in their position on the war against Hamas and Hezbollah.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz has been offered the defense job, while Gideon Saar has been tapped to take his position if he leaves, according to Israeli media.
“Serious differences arose between Gallant and me regarding the campaign’s management, with these disagreements accompanied by statements and actions that contradicted both government and cabinet decisions,” Netanyahu said in a statement on Tuesday, explaining his move.
According to Netanyahu, wartime requires “complete trust” between the head of government and the defense minister and that trust “has eroded” between him and Gallant in recent months.
“I made repeated efforts to bridge these gaps, but they only widened. These issues even reached the public in an unacceptable manner, and, worse, became known to our enemies, who took pleasure and found advantage in it,” the prime minister added.
Netanyahu praised Gallant’s replacement as a “bulldozer with quiet strength and responsible determination,” noting that Katz had headed the finance and intelligence ministries before taking on his current role.
This is the second time Netanyahu has fired Gallant. The first time was in March 2023, when the defense minister openly criticized the government’s judicial reforms, which he said divided Israeli society and threatened the military.
https://www.rt.com/news/607071-netanyahu-fires-defense-minister/
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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.
“It’s hard to do cartoons without liver pills…”
Gus Leonisky
protests....
Protests have erupted in Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired the country's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Netanyahu said a "crisis of trust" between the two leaders led to his decision, adding that his trust in Gallant had "eroded" in recent months and Foreign Minister Israel Katz would step in to replace him.
Gallant said his removal was due to disagreement on three issues, including his belief that it is possible to get the remaining hostages back from Gaza if Israel makes "painful concessions" which it "can bear".
Many protesters on the streets were calling for Netanyahu to resign, and demanding the new defence minister prioritise a hostage deal.
Netanyahu and Gallant have long had a divisive working relationship. During the past year, there have been reports of shouting matches between the two men over Israel’s war strategy.
The former defence minister has also been unhappy at plans to continue to allow Israel’s Ultra Orthodox citizens to be exempt from serving in the military.
Months before the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, Netanyahu had fired Gallant over political differences, before reinstating him following major public outcry.
But on Tuesday Netanyahu said: "In the midst of a war, more than ever, full trust is required between the prime minister and the minister of defence".
He said although there had been trust and "fruitful work" in the first months of the war, "during the last months this trust cracked".
Netanyahu added that "significant gaps were discovered between me and Gallant in the management of the campaign".
These were "accompanied by statements and actions that contradict the decisions of the government," he added.
Following the news, Gallant posted on social media that the "security of the state of Israel was and will always remain the mission of my life".
He later released a full statement on Tuesday night saying his removal from office had been "the result of disagreement on three issues".
He believed there should be no exceptions for military service, that a national inquiry was needed to learn lessons, and the hostages should be brought back as soon as possible.
In reference to the hostages, he said: "I determine that it is possible to achieve this goal. It requires painful concessions, which the state of Israel can carry and the IDF can bear."
One of those protesting following the announcement, Yair Amit, said Netanyahu is endangering the whole country and called on the prime minister to "step down from his office and to let serious people lead Israel".
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqj07jdzzgno
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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.
“It’s hard to do cartoons without liver pills…”
Gus Leonisky