The UN emergency relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, issued a grim warning about the humanitarian crisis created by the war in Gaza:
The UN’s top aid official has said the Israeli military campaign in southern Gaza has been just as devastating as in the north, creating “apocalyptic” conditions and ending any possibility of meaningful humanitarian operations.
The resumption of the military campaign and the continuation of the siege are a death sentence for civilians in Gaza. Even during the truce there was nowhere near enough aid reaching the people, and now it is impossible for any aid to reach them. Pre-war conditions in Gaza were already very bad, and in the last two months they have become nightmarish. Gaza was the world’s largest open-air prison before the war, and it is now being turned into the world’s largest charnel house. This is what comes from providing unconditional support to a policy of collective punishment.
The UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territories offered a similarly bleak assessment of the situation:
Throughout the Gaza Strip, Israel’s bombardment of Palestinians has intensified in recent days, and provision of life-saving humanitarian assistance has all but ceased, raising the spectre of disease, hunger, and death for Gaza’s 2.2. million civilians.
The World Food Program raised the alarm that Gaza is “on the brink of famine. Haaretz recently spoke with Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, and he said that the famine warning should be heeded:
“That is not a word any humanitarian organization uses lightly – it is used very sparingly, because there’s a risk it could get overused and watered down. The WFP knows better than anyone, so when they warn about the risk of famine, I take that extraordinarily seriously,” he says.
As Konyndyk explains, Gaza is especially vulnerable to famine because of its dependence on imports. It is worth noting here that the few means that the people of Gaza have to grow and produce their own food are also being destroyed by the Israeli military. Human Rights Watch has reported that satellite imagery shows the razing of orchards, fields, and greenhouses. We saw something similar during the war on Yemen where the Saudi coalition targeted farms and fishing vessels to strike at local means of food production at the same time that they used the blockade to strangle the country.
Widespread hunger is making the population more vulnerable to the spread of disease, and the lack of clean water and sanitation mean that waterborne diseases will start moving quickly through the population. The Haaretz report went on to say, “The combination of food insecurity and vulnerability to waterborne diseases, Konyndyk says, is “a terrifying combination to me, as someone who’s been around humanitarian response for a long time.” If conditions in Gaza are allowed to continue deteriorating like this, we will be looking at massive loss of life from disease and starvation that could have been prevented.
This is what was obviously going to happen when the Israeli government put the entire population under siege and then began devastating their public infrastructure and health care facilities. Haaretz quotes Konyndyk on this point:
He faults the Biden administration for empowering Israel to conduct an offensive from the outset “in a way that was so disproportionate and showed such disregard for civilian harm,” calling this “the inevitable outcome.”
“Siege tactics at a population level is not a close call in terms of international law. That is collective punishment and it is illegal,” he says.
The Biden administration started off pledging that they would put human rights at the center of their foreign policy. Now they are supporting a government as it bombs civilians with abandon and creates famine conditions in one of the most impoverished parts of the world. The head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, said this in a statement yesterday:
The pulverising of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age. Each day we see more dead children and new depths of suffering for the innocent people enduring this hell.
The people of Gaza are being starved by a blockade. This is not an accidental byproduct of war, but the predictable result of a policy to deprive the population of the basic necessities of life. They are also enduring one of the most intense bombing campaigns of this century. Hundreds of thousands have already seen their homes destroyed, and the vast majority of the population is now displaced with winter only weeks away. This is one of the worst man-made disasters in decades, and it will only get worse unless something is done to halt it.
Many innocent people are going to die from hunger, sickness, and exposure in the coming weeks and months, but most of that could still be prevented if the war and siege ended now. The U.S. is enabling the disaster, but it is also within our government’s power to put an end to it. If our government fails to use its considerable leverage to avert this catastrophe, it will be one of the most shameful episodes in the history of U.S. foreign policy.
In a private forum I’m a member of, the topic of Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza—dubbed “Operation Swords of Iron”—has been under discussion, and, regrettably, I have found myself in the position of being a lone voice speaking out against attempts to justify Israel’s ongoing war crimes in Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by which the “Jewish state” came into existence, and Israel’s systematic violation of the fundamental human rights of the Palestinians ever since.
Since this group includes individuals who exercise public influence, I’ve been viewing it is as my duty to exercise my own influence within the group by speaking out and setting the record straight both in terms of the history of the conflict and with respect to what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians in Gaza in retaliation for the horrific atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli civilians on October 7.
Since I’ve put the time into addressing numerous arguments there, I figure I might as well make the most use of that labor by publishing some of what I wrote here.
In particular, I want to provide my readers with an update about the horrific situation on the ground in Gaza, which I wrote for the purpose of posting to the discussion thread in response to someone who questioned my assertion that civilians are being massacred. In my response, I also pointed out that Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza is being carried out with openly genocidal intent.
Before I get to that, though, I’ll provide some of the context of what happened prior to that in the discussion.
Defending Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza
My participation in this particular discussion thread was prompted by one participant putting forth an argument attempting to defend of Israel’s war crimes. His view was that Israel must continue its military operations in Gaza until Hamas has been completely eliminated. This is essentially the same argument that I debated the negative to on The Tom Woods Show last month, my rebuttal being summarized in the statement, “So, no, Israel does not have a ‘right’, much less a ‘moral duty’, to commit war crimes in Gaza”.
So, I responded in the forum thread with an explanation for why Israel’s devastating indiscriminate bombardment is absolutely indefensible. After a few rounds of this, my interlocutor ended by incongruously admonishing me to join him in working towards peace, to which I responded by pointing out that I was the one literally advocating a humanitarian ceasefire while his whole argument was literally that Israel must continue its violence against the Palestinians in Gaza.
I won’t repeat all the points and counterpoints that were made because it was too lengthy an argument and too difficult to try to summarize, but one argument this individual made was that he and I just don’t agree on the distinction between legitimate self-defense and war crimes. My response to that was to say I doubt that very much, unless he simply rejected international humanitarian law. That Israel has committed massive war crimes is beyond dispute, as I’ll come to.
The Zionist Trope that Occupation Is Good for Palestinians
Journo in his book had made the same claim that the Palestinians benefited economically because of Israel’s occupation. I cited a World Bank report detailing rather how economic growth had occurred in the Occupied Palestinian Territories despite Israel’s economically repressive occupation. As the World Bank pointed out, for sustainable development to occur and for the Palestinian territories to reach their full economic potential, Israel’s occupation must end.
I won’t paste the whole excerpt from that section of my book here, but here are the final several paragraphs I wrote after detailing at length the myriad ways documented by the World Bank in which Israel’s occupation was harming Palestinians’ economy, with reference to the “broken window” fallacy in economics of failing to recognize opportunity costs:
Journo commits the same fallacy, highlighting the economic development that occurred in the occupied territories in the 1970s while ignoring the opportunity cost inherent in the occupation. That is to say, he ignores how the Palestinian economy would otherwise have been able to grow sustainably and at an even greater pace if they’d just enjoyed the freedom necessary for such growth to occur, to be able to live up to their full economic potential, as opposed to suffering under Israel’s oppressive and restrictive occupation regime.
Israel didn’t create the conditions for economic growth to occur. Rather, Israel calculatedly hindered economic growth in such a way as to make the Palestinians dependent upon their occupier, thus suppressing resistance so that Israel’s illegal land-grabbing settlement regime could continue apace, while taking advantage of the cheap labor provided by Palestinian commuters whose alternative employment opportunities were denied to them as a consequence of the restrictions on their freedom imposed by the occupation regime.
Journo’s presumption that the Palestinians ought to have been grateful to Israel for imposing its occupation regime on them is a stark illustration of his contempt for their right to self-determination, as well as his extraordinary hypocrisy in feigning to approach the subject from the premise that the right to individual liberty is inviolable.
By the time we come to the year 1987 and the mass uprising against the occupation known as the first intifada, Arabic for “throwing off”, we are supposed to be awed by Israel’s greatness and horrified by the Palestinians’ innate backwardness and inexplicable hatred of Jews. We are not supposed to be able to comprehend how Palestinians would wish for an end to Israel’s rule over them.
But setting aside Journo’s fiction and considering the actual nature of the occupation regime, the Palestinians’ desire for freedom is the simplest thing to understand. Their yearning for liberty, to be able to have a say in how they are governed, to determine their own fate and live up to their full potential, is a trait shared by all human beings. Evidently, Journo views them as something less, rejecting their human rights and projecting upon them his own hateful prejudice and inhumanity.
The Biblical Defense the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Another participant then posted a timeline and meme that together implicitly argued that because there was a 300-year period in ancient history during which a kingdom called Israel existed, therefore Zionist Jews in 1948 had a right to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous inhabitants.
I have a forthcoming article addressing this type of religious argument so won’t repeat my counterargument here except to point out that Jews actually owned less than 7% of the land in Palestine at the time the Zionist leadership unilaterally and with no legal authority declared the existence of their “Jewish state” on land in which Arabs were both the majority and owned most of the land.
I discussed the early history of the conflict at considerable length recently with economist Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard and other books, who is Palestinian and grew up in the West Bank, as he mentions during our discussion.
The Zionist Trope that Criticism of Israel Is “Anti-Semitism”
After posting my response to the religious argument, the person who posted the timeline and meme baselessly and absurdly accused me of “anti-Semitic slurs” that were “fomenting hate that is leading to violence” while not even attempting to identify anything I’d said that wasn’t true or any conclusions I’d drawn that didn’t logically follow from the facts. After pointing out that this type of baseless personal attack is the height of intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice, I further observed:
I remind you also that I am the one advocating an end to hostilities and peaceful co-existence based on mutual respect for the equal rights of Jews and Palestinians, while you are the one trying to defend Israel’s systematic violation of the rights of the Palestinians—and Israel’s ongoing war crimes in Gaza—by mindlessly equating legitimate criticisms of the Israeli government with “anti-Semitism”.
Additionally, the Introduction to my book was written by former economics editor of Barron’s Gene Epstein, who is also Jewish, and who wrote his Introduction specifically to preempt the intellectually dishonest equation of criticizing Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians with anti-Semitism.
I also quoted blurbs written for the book by famed intellectual Noam Chomsky and journalist Max Blumenthal, both also Jewish.
In the thread, I pasted Gene’s entire Introduction, which I won’t do here, but here’s the most relevant excerpt in the context of the “anti-Semite” accusation leveled at me:
In Hammond’s case, people who would benefit most from reading his book will put up a wall of resistance against the simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense he offers.
I know, because over the years I’ve spoken with many of these people. Their identity as Jews and as Americans—or identification with Jews or with Americans—seems to depend on a certain false narrative that is difficult for them to abandon. The falsity can often be demonstrated, as Hammond shows, not by citing sources critical of Israel, but by citing journalists, historians, and politicians who are themselves Jews, Zionists, or Israelis—a fact that, perhaps perversely, makes me proud of being a Jew. We are a candid people, who tell it like it is.
I found Obstacle to Peace quite convincing, but my pride in being Jewish and American, and my identification with many Israelis, remains intact. That should not be a difficult feat. . . . My pride in being Jewish is not diminished by knowledge of these facts, just as my contempt for Jew-haters is not diminished when they cite the crimes of Israel to justify their anti-Semitism.
People have told me that I “don’t support Israel” because of my views. They might as well level that accusation against the Israeli Peace Now movement, Shalom Achshav, established in 1978, and its sister organization, Americans for Peace Now. Those who subscribe to the mythic version of events are in effect condemning Israelis and Palestinians to a permanent state of war. With supporters like that, neither side may need antagonists.
RFK Jr.’s Defense of Israel’s Crimes Against the Palestinians
Next, the person who stupidly accused me of anti-Semitism shared the link to a video in which presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. once again tried to defend Israel’s military operation as well as its 16-year illegal blockade of Gaza, which prompted me to write the article I published yesterday, “Correcting RFK Jr on Israel’s Policies Toward Gaza“, which I then shared with the group.
To see Mr. Kennedy supporting Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinians’ human rights is heartbreaking to me. As someone who has become a prominent voice within the health freedom community, I have had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with Mr. Kennedy, whom I had come to have the utmost respect for his incredible leadership in fighting the Covid lockdown madness and the government’s systematic violation of the right to informed consent. I have also been impressed by his sensible views on US foreign policy, such as on the Ukraine war. We have corresponded on many occasions, including phone conversations, and he wrote the Foreword to my book The War on Informed Consent: The Persecution of Dr. Paul Thomas by the Oregon Medical Board.
I usually do not vote because there are no candidates worth voting for and I have no intention of legitimizing my own disenfranchisement by participating in the system that infringes on my personal liberties and steals from me, or legitimizing the violations of human rights of people in other countries as a result of US foreign policy. The only candidate I have ever voted for was Ron Paul, in 2008 and again as a write-in in 2012. But when Bobby Kennedy announced his candidacy earlier this year, I became an enthusiastic supporter.
It was with great regret that, after watching him defending Israel’s war crimes in Gaza after Hamas’s 10/7 attacks, I was compelled by my moral conscience to also publicly withdraw my support for his candidacy. It is simply not within me to be able to support any candidate who is willing to try to defend clear war crimes and crimes against humanity, any more than I could support a candidate who supported the authoritarian COVID-19 lockdowns and their coerced mass vaccination endgame.
I waited for several weeks before making my view public because I was holding out hope that I might see signs that he was coming around, that he might moderate his position from one of essentially repeating standard Zionist propaganda talking points intended to justify Israel’s criminal policies to one of respecting the equal rights of both Israelis and Palestinians.
Unfortunately, after seeing no such indications and rather watching him once again defend Israel’s war crimes while refusing to join those calling for a humanitarian ceasefire, I could wait no longer and issued my statement (first to my subscriber community, then published on my website).
I remain heartbroken, but I have no choice but to follow my conscience.
Civilians Are Being Massacred? Yes.
After posting the link to that article correcting Mr. Kennedy’s numerous false characterizations of the nature of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, I received a rebuke from yet another member of the discussion forum. I was told that I do not have some moral imperative to correct him, that I lacked integrity for “attacking” and “belittling” him, and that I should instead have the intellectual integrity to agree to disagree.
I responded by expressing my continued love for Mr. Kennedy and saying, “I stand by what I wrote. And, yes, I do have a moral imperative to speak out. I do not ‘agree to disagree’ when civilians are being massacred.”
Yet another member of the group then responded to ask, “Civilians are being massacred?”
I do not know whether the question was sincerely asked because this person really has not been paying attention to what’s been happening in Gaza or because she was implicitly trying to challenge me because she believed the ludicrous Zionist propaganda claim that Israel is “the most moral army in the world” and does everything possible to avoid harm to civilians.
That is a claim that I thoroughly and utterly demolish in my book Obstacle to Peace and also addressed briefly but sufficiently in my article setting the record straight in response to Kennedy’s mischaracterizations of the nature of Israel’s policies toward Gaza.
Whatever the intent behind the question, here was my response:
Yes, civilians are being massacred. The death estimate as of yesterday was over 17,177, about 30% of whom are women and 40% children. More Palestinian children were killed in just the first [three] weeks of Israel’s onslaught than in all of the other conflict zones in the world combined for each of the years 2020, 2021, and 2022.
As of November 24, 50% of the housing stock in Gaza had been damaged and 10% completely destroyed. Israel has systematically targeted civilian infrastructure including power systems, water supplies, bakeries, hospitals, and schools, including UN-run schools where displaced civilians have sought shelter. The devastation has of course increased greatly in the two weeks since.
Early in its operations, the IDF ordered the entire northern half of Gaza to evacuate and go south while also bombing the south. It has since ordered the entire population of Gaza, over 2 million people, to a coastal area, to borrow scholar Norman Finkelstein’s comparison, about the size of the Los Angeles airport. The destruction that the IDF wrought on the north is now being done to the south. Palestinians are being told to flee, but they have nowhere safe to go.
Nearly 85% of the population is now displaced. The shelters are overrun. Gaza remains under an electricity blackout. There is a grave lack of fuel to run generators. The over-capacity health care system is collapsing, with only 14 of 36 hospitals in Gaza even partially functioning, only 2 in the north. The WHO has documented over 200 attacks on health care, including 24 hospitals and 59 ambulances. Humanitarian aid operations that the civilian population is absolutely dependent on for survival have virtually halted because of the serious danger to relief workers, with 130 UN relief workers already having been killed.
This is a humanitarian catastrophe of absolutely horrific proportions. The UN Secretary General has invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, bringing to the Security Council’s attention the grave threat to international peace and security posed by the situation, an effort to push the Council to call for the urgently needed permanent ceasefire—not a “pause” in hostilities—that UN humanitarian agencies and international human rights organizations have been calling for to save Palestinian civilians from dying in massive numbers, but which efforts have been blocked by the US.
Moreover, Israel’s military operation is being conducted with openly genocidal intent.
Netanyahu invoked the fabled Israelite genocide of the Amalekites and declared the goal of turning Gaza into rubble.
The Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared that Israel would block the supply of electricity, food, water, and fuel to the civilian population because the IDF was “fighting human animals”. “Gaza won’t return to what it was before,” he also said. “We will eliminate everything.”
The IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the [Occupied] Territories (COGAT) echoed that “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”
The IDF’s spokesperson Daniel Hagari prior to Israel’s ground invasion said with regard to Israel’s bombardment that “the emphasis is on damage and not accuracy”.
Ezra Yachin, a 95-year-old Israeli military veteran who was involved in the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre, rallied IDF soldiers to “Be triumphant and finish them off and don’t leave anyone behind. Erase the memory of them. Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live.”
Not content to massacre the civilian population of Gaza, he further called on Israeli Jews to kill Arab Israelis: “Every Jew with a weapon should go out and kill them. If you have an Arab neighbor, don’t wait, go to his home and shoot him.”
Israeli academic Mordechai Kedar on BBC Arabic objected to the description of Palestinians as “human animals”, saying “I do not equate them with animals because that is an insult to animals.”
On Twitter, Israeli politician and former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin called on the IDF to “completely destroy Gaza”, “I mean destruction like it was in Dresden and Hiroshima”.
“Gaza needs to turn to Dresden, yes!” he repeated in another tweet. “Complete incineration. No more hope. . . . Annihilate Gaza now! Now!”
Knesset member Galit Distel-Atbaryan took to Twitter to tell people to “Hate the monsters” and “Invest this energy in one thing; Erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth. That the Gazan monsters will fly to the southern fence and try to enter Egyptian territory, or they will die…. Gaza should be erased.”
Former head of the Israeli National Security Council Giora Eiland, who during his tenure in 2004 appropriately described Gaza as “a huge concentration camp”, wrote in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth that “Israel has no choice but to make Gaza a place that is temporarily, or permanently, impossible to live in. . . . Every building will be a military target.” Gazans must be told to “evacuate to the UNRWA schools and the Shifa Hospital, and immediately after that the Air Force will attack these targets”. It was not enough to stop the flow of electricity, fuel, and water; the IDF must “gradually attack targets that provide these essential needs, and if necessary also to block with fire any vehicle passage from the city of Rafah to the north. Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal.”
In another article, Eiland wrote that “Israel issued a stern warning to Egypt and made it clear that it would not permit humanitarian aid from Egypt to enter Gaza. Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, compelling tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Egypt or the Gulf.” The goal of the IDF’s operation is that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist”.
Raz Segal, an Israeli historian and director of the genocide studies program at Stockton University has described what has been happening in Gaza “a textbook case of genocide”. The organization Jewish Voice for Peace has called on the world community to demand a ceasefire to protect the Palestinian people against genocide. 880 legal scholars and academics in conflict studies and genocide studies issued a statement on October 15 warning of potential genocide, observing that Israeli official’s incitement of genocide was being followed up with Israel’s indiscriminate bombing. The Center for Constitutional Rights three days later issued a briefing paper describing Israel’s crime of genocide and the US government’s complicity in it. On October 19, seven UN Special Rapporteurs issued a statement decrying the bombing of hospitals and schools and called on the world community to act to prevent genocide.
So, yes, to answer the question again, civilians are being massacred in Gaza, with openly declared genocidal intent.
I then added that this is what other group members were trying to defend, and this is what Mr. Kennedy has been also trying to defend. In doing so, I must regrettably say, he is completely discrediting himself as a defender of children and human rights. My heart is broken, and my soul is weeping. It is unconscionable. And I cannot in good conscience remain silent about it.
The NDAA includes a provision to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence, which allows mass warrantless surveillance of Americans. US government agencies portray the law as designed to target foreigners outside of the US, but it allows the collection of any communications they have with Americans, including emails and text messages.
Section 702 was due to expire at the end of this year, but the NDAA extends it to April 19, 2024. According to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), the House only needed 143 votes to strip the extension out of the NDAA, but only 118 House members voted “nay,” including 73 Republicans and 45 Democrats.
“Here are the 118 Representatives who voted to protect your right to privacy. (Nay to FISA warrantless surveillance as part of NDAA),” Massie wrote on X with a picture of the roll call. “We lost but it was close. We needed 143 votes (1/3) to stop FISA since they suspended the rules to bring it to the floor.”
The mammoth $886 billion NDAA is $28 billion more than what was approved last year. President Biden is seeking another $111 billion to fund military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan on top of regular military spending, but Republicans are holding out until Democrats agree to a deal on significant changes to border policies.
The new NDAA includes several amendments to fund the US and allied military buildup in the Indo-Pacific that’s aimed at China. One amendment allows the Pentagon to transfer three nuclear-powered Virginia-class submarines to Australia as part of the AUKUS military pact the US, Britain, and Australia signed in 2021 to prepare for a future war with China.
A UN Security Council vote on December 8, demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war, failed because the U.S. used their veto power in the sole dissenting vote. The U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, did not cast the damning vote, she sent her assistant instead, shielding herself from the disgust of the international community. Thomas-Greenfield is the direct descendant of African slaves held in America without citizenship or human rights, similar to the Palestinian people today.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani ahead of the December 8 meeting with the Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee, including Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Jordan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Al-Safadi, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry, Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Riyad Al-Maliki, and Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Hakan Fidan.
Some had envisioned the meeting between Blinken and the Arab ministers would take place prior to the UN vote, and the ministers could present their case as to why a ceasefire to save children’s lives should be supported by the U.S., as initiated by Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres.
But, instead Blinken waited until after the U.S. voted no, and the ceasefire was an impossibility, to sit around the table with the Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee, who all looked dejected, and hopeless. They all told Blinken they reject the U.S.-Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and called on the U.S. to assume its responsibilities and take the necessary measures to push Israel towards an immediate ceasefire. They also called for a lifting of the siege which prevents adequate amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
They voiced their rejection against attempts to displace Palestinians from Gaza, emphasizing on “creating a real political climate that leads to a two-state solution,” after over 75 years of brutal occupation of the Palestinian people.
However, their concerns have fallen on deaf ears. The Biden administration is stuck in the past, thinking itself immune to criticism from the international community, and the Middle Eastern countries which are key allies of the U.S., energy providers, and housing some of the largest American military bases in the world.
“I certainly would hope that our partners in the U.S. will do more… we certainly believe they can do more,” the Saudi minister added.
Before the vote
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said prior to the UN vote that if the resolution fails, it would be giving a license to Israel “to continue with its massacre.”
“Our priority for now is to stop the war, stop the killing, stop the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure,” Safadi said adding, “The message that’s being sent is that Israel is acting above international law… and the world is simply not doing much. We disagree with the United States on its position vis-a-vis on the cease-fire.”
“The solution is a cease-fire,” said Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry,
What can the Arab world do?
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt are all staunch American allies. They host some of the largest U.S. military bases on earth. Most of them buy their weapons from the U.S., and all of them are consumers of very large amounts of products made in the USA. Saudi King Faisal shut-off the oil in support of the Palestinians in the past, but they would never do that now as they are locked into OPEC pumping schedules. But, the Arabs have other leverage they could use to move the U.S. position from blind acquiescence to Israeli orders.
Israeli plan to wipe-out Gaza
Mustafa Barghouti is a Palestinian physician, activist, and politician who serves as General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.
“I am 100% sure that their main goal right from the beginning was the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza, trying to push people to Egypt, a terrible war crime. And if they managed to do so, I think their next goal will be to try to ethnically cleanse the West Bank and force people to join them,” said Barghouti.
Barghouti added, “If they fail to ethnically cleanse all Gazans, I am sure that Netanyahu’s plan B is to annex Gaza City and the north of Gaza completely to Israel and claim it as a security area.”
Concerning the prospect of Israeli troops remaining in Gaza, he said “Israel did that before and it didn’t work. And there will be resistance to their occupation, which they cannot tolerate. And that’s why Netanyahu’s goal really is to ethnically cleanse people. He wants to have military control of Gaza without people. He knows very well that Gaza with people is something that is unmanageable.”
Boycott Israel and the U.S.
The Arab world comprises about 300 million people. The populations are consumers of American products in huge amounts.
During World War II, a movement by American Jews called for a boycott of Nazi Germany. That was followed by a boycott of the Apartheid regime in South Africa that began in the late 1950s and is largely credited for raising awareness of the injustice in the following decades.
Purchasing Nazi products in Germany, or the Apartheid regime in South Africa, supported their crimes and gave their existence and activities a legitimacy that enabled them to continue.
In the past two months, ever since Starbucks’ corporate office announced it would sue its union for posting a pro-Palestine statement, a strong boycott has left the company with a loss of nearly $12 billion.
The company’s support for Israel has caused a drop in sales while the company was hosting its Red Cup Day, an annual event where baristias hand out reusable holiday themed cups. Over 5,000 workers at 200 stores went on strike in solidarity with Palestine and worker rights.
Coffee drinkers are looking to switch to a local café which does not support the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
American public is isolated, insulated, and far-removed from the war in Gaza, and often they have no idea what Europeans, South Americans, Canadians, Africans and Asians are thinking about the U.S. policy to support the genocide in Gaza and prevent a cease-fire.
Since 2005, the official BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) Movement has run a coordinated boycott effort to help Palestine, which called for “a broad boycott of Israel and the implementation of divestment from it, in steps similar to those applied against South Africa during the apartheid era.”
In the U.S., many college campuses have passed resolutions to divest from these companies, bringing boycotts to a new, younger, more energetic generation. President Joe Biden is far out-of-step with these younger people, who in a recent poll showed 70% disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza.
Recent campaigns urging people to boycott companies such as McDonald’s, Disney, Starbucks, Coca Cola and others have gone viral around the world. In some countries, restaurants have removed Coca Cola and Pepsi products.
Many people globally have cancelled their Disney+ subscriptions, and young children have been heard saying they won’t eat McDonald’s because it kills children in Gaza.
There are lists of large companies around the world, owning hundreds of famous brands, that operate in Israel or support them in one way or another, such as L’Oréal, Nescafe coffee or Heinz products.
The boycott results in dwindling sales and revenues of American and Israeli products. With the academic and cultural boycott, the American Anthropological Association decided to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
Social media
Information, videos, photos and comments are being delivered to our phones and laptops constantly. The global audience can’t turn away from the genocide in Gaza. In the 2014 war on Gaza, which lasted six weeks, Israel killed about 2,300 Palestinians. But now, the Palestinian death toll exceeded 12,000 during the first six weeks, and is edging upward of 17,000.
The Biden administration has supported the genocide in Gaza, and has done nothing to stop the Israeli war machine. State Department employees and White House staffers have also voiced condemnation of the un-checked and un-restrained Israeli war machine marching through Gaza, which has left no place safe, and has caused the survivors to face actual starvation according to the UN. America is the chief supporter of Israel, and holds immense leverage over Israel, but refuses to demand that they stop the genocide and bring home the hostages. Biden and Blinken are oblivious to American public opinion, and the international community.
For all the people who want the end of days to come sooner rather than later, just find a church where author Dr. Mike Evans speaks. He’ll be the first to tell congregations of 500 or more that bombing Iran is the only way to save Israel. The former 700 Club superstar warmonger claims America can only avert Armageddon by starting it. No, really. The congregations out there seem fully ready for the “big ride” to begin.
Evans’ latest report in the Jerusalem Post, entitled “America needs to bomb Iran,” wreaks of Zionist hatred for Sunni and Shia Muslims. Evans and his benefactors make sure every good Christian is a card-carrying Arab hater, Russia hater, China hater, and bigot against everyone and everything that is not in the interest of Israel. Good Christians are expected to applaud the Zionists blasting babies and their moms into the sky or burying them beneath a hundred tons of rubble in Gaza.
He appears frequently on Fox News (Rupert Murdoch), CNN World News (David Zaslav), NBC (Brian L. Roberts), ABC (Disney-Vanguard Group), CBS (Shari Redstone), the Wall Street Journal (Rupert Murdoch), USA Today (Japan’s Softbank), the Washington Times (Unification Church – Sun Myung Moon), and the Jerusalem Post (Eli Azur).
Isn’t it interesting the number of Jewish owners that control these media conglomerates? And the two owners, not of a Zionist persuasion, certainly have no love lost on the American people or Greeks for that matter. The recently departed Pat Robertson of 700 Club harped on bombing Iran for decades and often broadcast from Israel during the height of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s success. The show is a bastion of so-called Judeo-Christian belief. The underpinnings of unrealistic Christian support for Israel, no matter what, is a much deeper topic. However, readers might want to look into the Hudson Institute…
To continue, Mike Evans and 99 percent of the American media are not alone in calling for Armageddon to start tomorrow. Mark Wallace, CEO of United Against Nuclear Iran, recently said, “Right now, the only appropriate response to the Iranians is a military response.” Wallace, who wreaks of CIA spookishness, Wallace is also head of the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), Turkish Democracy Project. He was also a senior advisor to deceased Senator and warmongering lunatic John McCain. As for the Turkish Project, this is a regime change seedling beneath the unified dream of unseating Turkish President Recip Erdoğan (See Gatestone and John Bolton). While searching Gatestone, look into Sears & Roebuck heiress Nina Rosenwald and her Central Fund of Israel Efforts. This rabbit hole of Zionists, Neocons, and controlling elites is endless, so let’s move on.
Armageddon, I mentioned it at the onset. So, what we have on the blue team are Americans propagandised by their preachers to love Zion and hate Arabs. And particularly the Iranian Muslims (See Shah of Iran exile for background). We also have the stuffy British Lords and Ladies, Luxembourg and Frankfurt bankers, the same old European royal elites, Japan, and scattered friendly states in the trenches. On the red team, there’s Iran and pretty much the entire Muslim world, probably Russia and most likely China, taking up for the Iranians and other players who’d as soon see the plains of Tel Megiddo irradiated. It’s crucial that we look at the Ukraine situation and how that has elevated Moscow-Tehran relations. The closer Russia and Iran are, the greater the chances of an unthinkable confrontation.
Finally, it’s no stretch to assume that churches in America have long been infiltrated and coerced into an absolute pro-Zionist stance. The media and financial sectors are overwhelmingly anti-Muslim and pro-Zionist. Compounding the problem is the fact that these institutions of the West are anti-Russian, anti-Chinese, and against anything that stands in the way of total world domination and dominion over us all.
It’s not a conspiracy theory any longer. We are finally seeing the authentic conspiracy from the world elites (Zionists and others) to rule everything once and for all. And where will this end?
“And they gathered them together to the place, which in Hebrew is called Har-Magedon.” – Revelation 16:16
Evidence is emerging that establishes the fact that Zionist forces killed their own people on October 7. Zionist propaganda (also known as Hasbara) has suggested that Palestinian resistance forces were responsible for their deaths, but the narrative doesn’t add up.
Since the launch of the Al-Aqsa Storm (Al-Aqsa Flood) operation five weeks ago, the Zionist entity and its global agents, assets and supporters have maintained that the Palestinian resistance factions – which they condense inaccurately into the name ‘Hamas’ – have engaged in direct targeting of civilians, including children and babies.
Very early on, there was a widely reported claim that up to 40 babies had been beheaded by “Hamas”. Even US President Joe Biden and other Western leaders fell for the hoax.
The claim has now been debunked. It was backed by no evidence and was sourced from settler and occupation military reservist David Ben Zion, who has previously incited violent riots against Palestinians and called for the occupied West Bank town of Huwara to be wiped out.
Emerging details from Oct. 7
In the ensuing weeks, a flurry of details emerged bringing other elements of the official Zionist narrative into question.
These details came from a combination of body camera and mobile phone footage of participants, eyewitnesses, captives released by the resistance, and media reporting and video material. The details include:
First, in the compilation of deaths published and continually updated by Haaretz, a “liberal” Zionist paper, only one child under the age of 4 was listed as having died. The data also discloses that 16 children between 4 and 17 were among the casualties. This clearly demonstrates that the story about the beheading of 40 babies was false. The data does not reveal anything about babies or children being killed.
Second, the data compiled by Haaretz up until 7 November showed that 374 out of 1145, or 33 percent, were Israeli military personnel, including a small number of Kibbutz security personnel, but not including fire and rescue services.
Third, footage emerged of occupation forces engaging resistance fighters from within crowds of festivalgoers. It suggested that many died in the crossfire.
Indeed, fourth, one British citizen, who was at the festival, and also a member of the occupation forces, reportedly died after throwing grenades (reportedly back) at resistance fighters. He, like many other young British Jews, had evidently been radicalised by the Zionist movement to the extent that he was willing to become a member of the occupation forces.
Fifth, it was reported from inside Gaza that some 50 detainees had died from Zionist indiscriminate bombing while being held by the resistance forces.
The most shocking details, however, were reports of Zionist responsibility for the deaths of significant numbers of civilian detainees and festival attendees.
Music festival mystery
First, it emerged that the scene of burnt-out and shot-up cars outside the music festival was the result not of the actions of “Hamas” but of gunfire from occupation forces on the ground or from Apache attack helicopters in the air.
Footage of festival goers running from the venue on foot appears to corroborate evidence that it was impossible to evacuate by car since Zionist police had blocked the only road out and, in some cases at least, fired on those approaching.
Danielle Rachiel described nearly being killed after escaping from the Nova music festival: “As we reached the roundabout [at a kibbutz], we saw Israeli security forces!” he recalled.
“We held our heads down [because] we automatically knew they’d be suspicious of us, in a small beat-up car… from the same direction the terrorists were coming from. Our forces began shooting at us! … our windows shattered”.
It was only when they shouted in Hebrew, “We’re Israelis!” that the shooting stopped.
As one helicopter pilot confessed: “There was tremendous difficulty in distinguishing within the occupied outposts and settlements who was a terrorist and who was a soldier or civilian”.
In total, there were reportedly “28 combat helicopters” firing “over the course of” the day. They reportedly emptied “all the ammunition in their bellies”, then repeatedly re-armed firing in the end “hundreds of 30 mm cannon shells … as well as the Hellfire missiles.”
According to reports in the Hebrew language press “The rate of fire … was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the targets.”
However, at one point, “Apache pilots [decided] to skip all the restrictions. It was only around 9:00 a.m. that some of them began to spray the terrorists with the cannons on their own, without authorization from superiors.”
Most (perhaps all or nearly all?) happened as a result of occupation forces’ actions. It is not known if this accounts for a few, most or nearly all of the reported 260 civilian casualties from the festival.
Second was the account of Yasmin Porat who had attended the music festival but fled to Kibbutz Be’eri. She declared in an interview on Israeli radio that the Israeli military had not distinguished between detainees and resistance fighters.
“They eliminated everyone, including the hostages,” she said. This would appear to involve the death of at least 12 captives, including her partner, apparently by gunfire.
Even more damning was the report from a settler who was away from Kibbutz Be’eri during the events.
The witness stated that the occupation fired tank shells at houses with all their occupants:
“His voice trembles when his partner, who was besieged in her home shelter at the time, comes to mind. According to him, only on Monday night and only after the commanders in the field made difficult decisions — including shelling houses with all their occupants inside to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages — did the IDF (Israeli military) complete the takeover of the kibbutz,” he said.
“The price was terrible: at least 112 Be’eri people were killed. Others were kidnapped. Yesterday, 11 days after the massacre, the bodies of a mother and her son were discovered in one of the destroyed houses. It is believed that more bodies are still lying in the rubble.”
Rubble of buildings and photographs
Given the fact that resistance fighters were lightly armed, the evidence of buildings reduced to rubble and burnt corpses and houses would appear to suggest Zionist forces were directly responsible for it.
The same is relevant with three photographs, two purporting to show the burnt corpse of a baby and one a bloodied but unburnt dead baby, and with the allegation of Hamas “roasting” a baby in an oven.
In the former case, we are already aware that one baby (not three) was listed among the dead. The photographs were spread all over social media including by the @IsraeliPM X (formerly Twitter) account (which garnered more than 6 million views) and one of them by pro-Israel extremist Ben Shapiro.
This latter image allegedly turned out to be an Artificial intelligence-generated image using a source image of a small dog, though this was later disputed.
The latter case – of the baby in the oven – would also appear to lack confirmation.
However, if either were genuine, the most obvious explanation for all of the accounts of burnt babies is that the infants were killed by incineration after occupation force strikes on the residential houses where they lived.
Hannibal Directive
Killing captives would appear to be in line with the little-known Zionist military doctrine known as the Hannibal Directive. Though disputed by some, it appears plausible the doctrine was named after the Carthaginian general, who chose to poison himself rather than fall captive to the Romans.
Created in 1986, and originally called the Hannibal Protocol, it posits as an overriding objective the need to avoid the capture of Zionist forces, if necessary, at the expense of eliminating their own forces. It remained a military secret until 2003.
During Israel’s ground attack on Gaza, in 2011, one Golani commander was caught on tape telling his unit: “No soldier in the 51st Battalion will be kidnapped, at any price or under any condition. … Even if it means that his unit will now have to fire at the getaway car.”
Later the occupation forces Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, modified the directive. Introducing what is described as an “ethical” principle known as the “double-effect doctrine”.
It states that a bad result (the killing of a captive soldier) is morally permissible only as a side effect of promoting a good action (stopping his captors).”
This bears a striking similarity to what happened on October 7th. Zionist lies are collapsing before our eyes.
Sometimes Israel’s crimes are so horrific that at first you don’t even understand what you’re looking at. You just stare at it trying to make sense of what you’re seeing for a bit, like you would if you suddenly saw a space alien or a leprechaun or something.
It happened to me yesterday when I was watching a Sky News report about a teenage boy who was shot by Israeli forces in Jerusalem for celebrating the release of Palestinian prisoners in the hostage negotiations with Hamas. I was watching it thinking to myself, I must be misunderstanding what I’m looking at. I know that Israel does gross things, but surely the story here isn’t that they shot a kid for being happy about something.
— Katie Halper is a Jew For #CeasefireNow (@kthalps) November 29, 2023
Then, as has happened so many times over the last two months, I kept watching and learned that yes, that is indeed what happened. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem Fleur Hassan-Nahoum is seen defending the shooting by saying “part of the deal is that there would be no celebrations for the release of attempted murderers” (this was actually not a part of the deal, it was just a decree issued by Israel’s national security minister) and claiming dishonestly that “we’re talking about the release of attempted murderers” (the vast majority have not been convicted of any crime and have been denied any due process for the accusations against them).
The band Eve6 nicely summed up what it felt like watching the clip of the deputy mayor’s comments, tweeting, “The remarkable thing about this clip is her self assurance. Like she’s supremely confident that ‘we shot the teenager because he was celebrating’ is a thing that people will find reasonable.”
Five tiny infants died starving, cold and alone. Their bodies decomposed. They were still connected to ventilation and intravenous tubes, 17 days after Israeli soldiers stormed the al-Nasr pediatric hospital and ordered doctors to leave https://t.co/IBLdmH0kvJ
I had the same experience reading about the five premature babies who were left to die after the IDF raided al-Nasr Pediatric Hospital in Gaza earlier this month, their decomposing bodies only discovered when the temporary ceasefire allowed access to the hospital. It’s just too insane to believe — they attacked a pediatric hospital? And then they left the babies there to die? What??
The only reason we’re learning about this now is because the pause in fighting allowed journalists to get cameras into the building and show the dead infants to the world. This calls to mind the Politico report immediately prior to the ceasefire which said that the White House was worried “an unintended consequence of the pause” would be “that it would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel.”
Indeed, since the pause in fighting began the world has been receiving drone footage from mainstream platforms like Reuters and The Washington Post revealing vast expanses of urban terrain completely destroyed by a blanket of Israeli military explosives spanning from city block to city block. Looking at the blatantly indiscriminate devastation that’s been caused by Israel’s assault on Gaza since October 7 makes it clear that the IDF are not targeting Hamas but Gaza itself.
Drone footage captured the wide-scale destruction of Gaza City. The territory’s northern population was advised by Israeli authorities to evacuate south as Israel waged war. Israel recently indicated the military operation may move south.
I’ve been amazed at how much I’ve been sleeping since the ceasefire started; that’s why I haven’t been writing as much. I guess spending weeks staring at unbelievable horrors unfolding on your screen can be pretty hard on your system if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, so my body’s been resting up as much as it can while there’s an opportunity.
And I’m just here watching this all unfold safely from my home in Melbourne. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be living in the midst of this horror for the last two months, trying to figure out the best way to survive while also grieving the family, friends and neighbors you’re losing along the way. These people have all been deeply traumatized in ways that will haunt them for the rest of their lives, if they survive the violence, disease and deprivation that’s to come.
This thing is so astonishingly ugly, and it could get a whole lot uglier after the ceasefire ends. If there’s anything positive to be found in this living nightmare, it’s that it’s so earth-shakingly ugly that it just might shake the world awake.
On September 22, 2023, 16 days before the attack by the Palestinian Resistance, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations in New York. He brandished a map of the “New Middle East” on which Israel had absorbed the Palestinian Territories.
We are reacting to the attack on Israel on October 7 and the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza on the basis of the information available to us. However, we feel that the official version of the Israeli government and Hamas is a lie.
Seven major questions remain unanswered:
1. How did Hamas manage to dig and build 500 kilometers of tunnels at a depth of 30 meters without arousing suspicion?
Tunnel-drilling equipment is considered to have both civilian and military uses. It is not manufactured in Gaza and cannot be brought in under any circumstances, unless there is complicity within the Israeli administration.
The excavated earth (1 million m3) was not detected by aerial surveillance. Even supposing it had been scattered in many different places and mixed in with the soil from other construction sites, it is impossible for the Israeli intelligence services not to have detected anything for twenty years.
Tunnel ventilation equipment is not considered to be for military use. It is possible to bring it into Gaza, but the quantity required should have attracted attention.
The reinforced concrete needed to solidify the walls is not manufactured in Gaza. It too is not considered military equipment, but the quantity required should have attracted attention.
2. How could Hamas stockpile such an arsenal?
Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has large quantities of rockets and handguns at its disposal. Hamas may have manufactured parts of the rockets itself, but it has managed to import thousands of handguns into Gaza, mainly from the Ukraine, despite high-performance scanners. This seems impossible without complicity within the Israeli administration.
3. Why did Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed all those who warned him?
Egypt’s Minister of Intelligence, Kamel Abbas, personally phoned him to warn of a major Hamas attack.
His friend, Colonel Yigal Carmon, Director of Memri, personally warned him of a major Hamas attack.
The CIA sent Israel two intelligence reports warning of a major Hamas attack.
Defense Minister Yoav Galland was fired in July because he warned the government of the “perfect storm” prepared by Hamas.
4. Why did Benjamin Netanyahu demobilize the security forces on the evening of October 6?
The Prime Minister had authorized the Security Forces to stand down for the holidays of Sim’hat Torah and Shemini Atzeret. At the time of the attack, therefore, there were no personnel available to monitor the security fence around Gaza.
5. Why did security officials remain locked up at Shin Bet headquarters that morning?
The Director of Counterintelligence (Shin Bet), Ronen Bar, had called a meeting of the heads of all the security services for 8 a.m. on October 7, to examine the second CIA report warning of a major Hamas operation in preparation.
However, the attack began at 6.30 a.m. on the same day. Security officials didn’t react until 11am. What did they do during this interminable meeting?
6. Who triggered the “Hannibal directive” in this way, and why?
When the Security Forces began to react, the IDF was ordered to apply the “Hannibal directive”. This stipulates that enemies must not be allowed to take Israeli soldiers hostage, even if it means killing them. An Israeli police investigation confirms that the Israeli air force bombed the crowd fleeing the Supernova Rave Party. A significant proportion of those killed on October 7 were therefore not victims of Hamas, but of Israeli strategy.
In theory, the “Hannibal directive” only applies to soldiers. Who decided to bomb a crowd of Israeli civilians, and why? It is not possible today to determine with any certainty which Israelis were killed by the attackers and which were killed by their own army.
7. Why are Western forces threatening Israel?
The Pentagon has deployed two naval groups, around the USS Gerald Ford and the USS Eisenhower, and a cruise missile submarine, the USS Florida. Haaretz even mentioned a third aircraft carrier. America’s allies (Saudi Arabia, Canada, Spain, France, Italy) have installed fighter-bombers in the region.
These forces are not installed to threaten Turkey, Qatar or Iran, which the Western press accuses of being involved in the Hamas attack, but off the coast of Israel, in Beirut and Hamat. They are encircling Israel. And Israel alone.
WHAT LIES BEHIND THESE MYSTERIES?
Obviously the version defended by both Hamas and Israel is false. We must consider other possible explanations so as not to be manipulated by either one or the other.
Let’s formulate a hypothesis. There is nothing to say whether it is the correct one, but it is compatible with the factual elements, which is not the case with the version shared today by everyone. So it’s better than that one. It is obviously extremely shocking, but only those who are able to answer the previous 7 questions can dismiss it.
This interpretation is based on an analysis of the complex structure of Hamas, whose rank-and-file fighters are unaware of what their leaders are up to. There it is :
The entire operation of Hamas and Israel is led by Americans, perhaps under the direction of the Straussian Eliott Abrams [1] and his Vandenberg Coalition (Think Tank which succeeded the Project for a New American Century). The Muslim Brotherhood and the Revisionist Zionists, who apparently are waging a cruel war, are in reality accomplices at the expense of the rank-and-file Hamas fighters, the Palestinian people and Israeli soldiers. Here is their plan: Hamas is presented as the only effective resistance force to the oppression of the Palestinians, but it lets Israel liquidate the hope of a Palestinian state, while the Muslim Brotherhood, crowned with the sacrifice of the Palestinians, takes power in the Arab world.
The heads of Hamas’s military and political branches are both subordinate to the Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, the successor to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, yet nobody talks about him. From his point of view, the Brotherhood will be the big winner of the “Flood of Al-Aqsa”, even if Gaza is razed to the ground and the Palestinians driven from their land.
Hamas is now divided into two factions. The first, under the leadership of Ismaël Haniyeh, follows the Brotherhood’s line. It seeks neither to liberate Palestine from Israeli occupation, nor to found a Palestinian state, but is dedicated to building a Caliphate over all the countries of the Middle East. The second, under the leadership of Khalil Hayya, has abandoned the Brotherhood’s ideology, and is fighting to put an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israelis.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a political secret society, organized by British intelligence services on the model of the United Grand Lodge of England [2]. It was gradually taken over by the CIA to the point of being represented on the US National Security Council. After the collapse of the Islamist regimes of the Arab Spring, the Brotherhood fractured into two trends. The London Front, led by Guide Ibrahim Munir (who died a year ago), proposed a way out of the crisis by leaving the political arena and securing the release of prisoners in Egypt. The Istanbul Front, led by interim leader Mahmoud Hussein, advocates, on the contrary, changing nothing and continuing the struggle to establish a Caliphate. A third group is attempting to establish an intermediate position, putting forward the idea of abandoning politics until the prisoners have been released, only to return to it at a later date.
The Muslim Brotherhood is fighting to seize power in all Arab states, as it did in Egypt in 2012-13. It should be remembered that, contrary to widespread opinion in the West, Mohamed Morsi was never democratically elected President of Egypt; that was General Ahmed Chafik. However, after the Brotherhood threatened to kill members of the Electoral Commission and their families, the latter, after 13 days of resistance, declared Morsi elected, despite the results of the ballot box. Subsequently, in 2013, 40 million Egyptians marched against him, calling on the army to deliver them from the Muslim Brotherhood. General Abdel Fatah Al-Sissi did just that.
Today, the Muslim Brotherhood is only in power in Tripolitania (western Libya), where it was brought to power by NATO. They are only welcome in Qatar and Turkey (which is not an Arab state). They are banned in the majority of Arab states, notably Saudi Arabia (whose monarch they tried to overthrow in 2013) and the United Arab Emirates (involving the crisis between Qatar and the other Gulf states). And above all in Syria (whose government they tried to overthrow in 1982 and to which they waged war, from 2011 to 2016, alongside Nato and Israel). They are about to do the same in Tunisia (which they ruled for a decade).
If the real objective of this massacre is not the status of Palestine, but the governance of Arab states, we can expect a wave of regime changes in the Middle East, each time to the benefit of the Brotherhood – in short, a kind of second “Arab Spring” [3].
As during the Arab Spring, the British services are responsible for the Brotherhood’s communications. We remember the way they promoted Brother Abdelhakim Belhaj in Libya [4] or the magnificent logos they designed for the host of jihadist groups in Syria. Leaks to the Foreign Office confirmed all this. This time, they created a new character, Abu Obeida, the spokesman for the fighting organization in Gaza. This man, unknown until recently, has suddenly become a star in the Muslim world, where posters of him are being snapped up. Well-trained in public speaking, he handles symbols with an ease unprecedented among Sunni leaders.
Arab governments are therefore acting cautiously, supporting the creation of a Palestinian state while keeping their distance from Hamas. While Hamas is doing everything to make the creation of a Palestinian state impossible.