Israel vs Palestine/Lebanon/Iran/Yemen/Syria: a New Middle East War

[Bill Ryan]

From Colombian President Gustavo Petro, on the bombardment of Gaza.

https://t.me/ZandVchannel/84301

The text: (translated)

It must stop. There must be no more deaths of children. This is a war crime. Western leaders have become Herods: we expected you to build democracy - not kill children.

[grapevine]

https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/s/K5Fb5OaaZC

Stirling speech from MP in Irish Parliament :

How come we never hear the words ‘PALESTINE has the right to defend itself'?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tARjA_DKiNc

[SilentFeathers]

2 American hostages released.

Hamas releases 2 US hostages in 'major development,' sources confirm

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YyixVX5SQNM

[shaberon]

With some inkling perhaps these are not stock photos, this is one of the pipelines Americans use to steal Syrian LNG:






That's called "a reprisal".

We cannot usually determine the effect of drone and small missile attacks, which are often thwarted, but expect these on a daily basis from now on.


Meanwhile at the office:


A veteran US state department official has quit over what he described as the Biden administration’s “intellectual bankruptcy” in sending more weapons and ammunition to the Zionist entity, as Gaza health officials said Israeli bombing had killed more than 3,700 people.

Josh Paul, the Director of Congressional and Public Affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, said in a letter posted on LinkedIn that the government “rushing” to provide arms to Israel was “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse”.

In the letter, first reported by HuffPost, Paul said Hamas’s attack on Israel was “a monstrosity of monstrosities”.

“But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people,” he wrote.

“This administration’s response – and much of Congress’s as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia.”

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Joe Biden plans to ask Congress to approve $10bn in “mostly military assistance” for the Zionist entity.

Paul described the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs as “the US government entity most responsible for the transfer and provision of arms to partners and allies”.

In his 11 years at the bureau, Paul said, he had “made more moral compromises than I can recall”.

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1715570911821087151

Text:
Israel is finalising the closure of Al Jazeera over its coverage of the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which it says is helping Hamas.

The Qatar-based network is the biggest Arabic language news outlet providing televised and online updates on the situation in Gaza, within Israel and in other occupied Palestinian territories.

Before the ban on the network is enacted, it will need approval from Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who is expected to sign the regulation.

🔗Read more: https://middleeasteye.net/news/israe...-media-reports

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/i...-media-reports

Israel-Palestine war: Authorities finalising closure of Al Jazeera, Israeli media reports

Israel is finalising the closure of Al Jazeera over its coverage of the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which it says is helping Hamas.

The Qatar-based network is the biggest Arabic language news outlet providing televised and online updates on the situation in Gaza, within Israel and in other occupied Palestinian territories.

On Friday, a number of Israeli media outlets, including i24 News and Times of Israel, said that the Israeli government had approved "emergency regulations" that would shutter broadcasters that are deemed to be acting against the "security of the state".

The Times of Israel quoted Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi who said Israel was at war on "land, in the air, at sea, and on the public diplomacy front".

Before the ban on the network is enacted, it will need approval from Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who is expected to sign the regulation.

Although floated as temporary, the ban can be renewed at 30-day intervals.

The move against Al Jazeera comes amid a wider crackdown on opposing views within Israel.

Wider crackdown on dissent

Karhi has also proposed targeting any journalist, including Israelis, who are deemed to be "harming national morale".

Journalists and other citizens could have their homes searched, property seized and could be placed under arrest for speech the government deems undesirable.

A vigilante mob of far-right Israelis attacked journalist Israel Frey after he expressed solidarity with Palestinians under bombardment in Gaza, forcing him and his family into hiding.

On the international front, Israeli public diplomacy accounts have condemned media outlets for getting their news from "terrorist organisations".

Al Jazeera has a vast operation within Gaza, which will likely continue to broadcast out of the besieged territory.

The network has a frosty relationship with Israel despite being one of the first in the region to interview Israeli figures on-air.

In 2022, Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by an Israeli soldier while reporting in Jenin.

The network most recently condemned Israel for a missile attack on a group of journalists in Lebanon, which included its own reporters.

"Israel has once again attempted to silence the media by targeting journalists, as Israeli forces fired a guided missile at Al Jazeera crew in southern Lebanon, wounding two and killing a Reuters journalist," the network said in a statement.

Middle East Eye contacted Al Jazeera for comment regarding the planned closure of its operation in Israel but the network had not responded by the time of publication.

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1715505109956755626

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Text:
A new forensic analysis by Forensic Architecture at London University reveals the strike at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza came from the direction of #Israel and that it was probably an artillery shell.

This directly contradicts Israel's claim that it was a missile fired from the southwest of Gaza.
#GazaHospital
#GazaHospitalAttack

https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1715496802521153537

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/PalestineRCS/status/1715423053692166568

Text:
BREAKING: Israeli Army Orders Immediate Evacuation of Al Quds Hospital in Gaza

- The Director of Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza has informed Al Jazeera that the Israeli army has instructed them to evacuate the hospital.

- The hospital currently houses more than 12,000 displaced people.

Source: Al Jazeera
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1715422116017832013

https://x.com/PalestineRCS/status/1715415685096931626

https://x.com/TIMES_INT/status/1715577795739562441

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/PalestineRCS/status/1715474535837843804

https://x.com/PalestineRCS/status/1715426349349843089

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1715382423804871094

https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1715325995052380330

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1715570762235400597

https://x.com/sahouraxo/status/1715550462886232249

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/UNRWA/status/1715399566042792402

[shaberon]

The western world probably first got this as the theme of Dante's Mirrors.






They are not many, but they imply self-reflection on each theme or issue that leads to unpleasant destinies.

He was an anti-papal Ghibilene/White Guelph, constrained to write in symbolism, such as in Inferno:


And truly was I son of the She-bear, 225

225 Nicholas III, of the Orsini (the Bears) of Rome, chosen Pope in 1277. “He was the
first Pope, or one of the first,” says Villani, VII. Ch. 54, “in whose court simony was
openly practised.”


It is often held that his whole point is in the parting words of Virgil in Purgatorio XXVII:

Thee o’er thyself I therefore crown and mitre!


Which in context is the Templar goal:


Freedom from being told what to think in the political sphere, and from papal religious authority.


And it appears the west may still be having difficulty with the mirror.

Here is a trickle of additional reporting asserting the pipeline was a hit, a little bit different than the base attacks, and ten years later we still have the guy in London posting whatever he wants to say:

At around the same time as the blast near Conoco, several explosions were heard near the U.S. Green Village base at al-Omar oil fields in the southeastern Deir Ezzor countryside. While some Syrian news sources said that the base came under attack, the SOHR reported that the explosions were the result of live-fire drills by the American troops.

In the early morning, the Conoco base was targeted with rockets and three suicide drones struck the U.S. garrison in the southeastern Syrian area of al-Tanf. The Al-Arabiya TV reported, citing U.S. officials, that a number of troops in al-Tanf sustained minor injuries.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of Iranian-backed armed factions, claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying that they were carried out in response to the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.

Oddly, for the pipeline, quite possibly a ground-based bomb:


No side has claimed responsibility for the attack, yet.



Concerning the minor aerial attacks, the Iraqi damage reports:

A civilian contractor working with United States forces at Ayn al-Assad Air Base in the western Iraqi province of al-Anbase died from a cardiac arrest during a “false alarm,” Reuters reported on October 20, citing American officials.

Ayn al-Assad Air base and al-Harir Air Base in the northern Iraqi Kurdistan region, which also hosts U.S. troops, were both attacked with suicide drones on October 18. The U.S. Central Command said that the attacks were repelled, but acknowledged “minor losses” at Ayn al-Assad.

On the same day, a rocket attack targeted the U.S. Camp Victory near Baghdad International Airport, Iraqi police said, without providing further details.

Several U.S. troops were lightly wounded at al-Tanf.

Financial Times is of course paywalled...but, according to anonymous:

...one senior diplomat from a Group of Seven nation told a London-based newspaper earlier this week, the dissonance in Washington’s positions has undermined efforts to win global support for Ukraine and to isolate Russia.

“We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,” the diplomat said. “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost . . . Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.”

“What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza. Otherwise we lose all our credibility,” the diplomat added. “The Brazilians, the South Africans, the Indonesians: why should they ever believe what we say about human rights?”

and American lawyer:

US labor and human rights lawyer, writer and activist Dan Kovalik told Radio Sputnik’s The Critical Hour that in fact, Moscow was never a global pariah, it’s the G7 nations that have isolated themselves from the majority of humanity.

...the US looks like a huge hypocrite and that's obvious to the world.”

However, the hosts noted there was one way the US had been consistent: in both Israel and Ukraine, US President Joe Biden has intervened to shut down potential peace deals championed by Russia and China in favor of keeping the conflicts going.
“The US does this time and time again,” Kovalik pointed out. “It kills peace in order to keep the wheels of war moving.”

...the US will soon stand alone in the world because even now Western Europe is turning on the US, because they see not only the US' hypocrisy, but they now understand what a lot of us have known for a while, and that is that the US’ proxy war in Ukraine against Russia has been as much about undermining Europe as it is undermining Russia,” Kovalik said.

“So I think the US will find itself to be the pariah country in the world.”

Only veto to Gazan ceasefires is American.

As what they call "food for thought", excerpted from Julian MacFarlane:


Most people are taught that Hitler was advocating the Big Lie, as a way of promoting anti-Semitism. And that he used this technique to promote anti-Semitism in the Reich. That’s choice (b) on your SAT.

The facts, however, are different.

Hitler felt that it was the Jews and Marxists who were using the Big Lie technique! And that he was a Truth Teller, countering big lies with a truth campaign, ironically borrowing techniques from Edward Bernays, an American Jew. How very American?


"Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government." -- Edward Bernays

Let us keep in mind that Bernays coined the term “public relations” as an alternative for “propaganda”. He understood that the two things were identical. Both seek to persuade people to believe things, which may or may not be true. Both must seem credible. Both must appeal to the imagination and emotion, rather than logic.

The goal is not to inform —but to persuade people to do things they would otherwise not do.

Ah yes, when somebody tells you something you don’t want to hear – they are lying.

Where have we heard that before? 10 minutes ago? Isn’t that what the Western mantra about “disinformation” and “misinformation” is all about?

The greatest exponent of mass mind control was never Hitler – nor Stalin – Nor Mao. In fact, it was not a single person, but a political culture— that of the US, which has taken fascism and propaganda to new levels with unprecedented powers of persuasion which the dictators of the past could only envy.

Churchill was no less racist than Hitler; he was an old-fashioned imperialist— and like America today—wanted to revive a declining empire. Also like the US, he didn’t like competition.

He did not care if his policies killed 3 million Indians or hundreds of thousands of civilians across Europe with terror bombings. And at the end of World War II. He wanted to nuke the Russians.

Since World War II, US empire building worldwide has led to an estimated 30 million deaths – although this number is disputed. It might be 10 million or 20 million – or more than 30 million. The number doesn’t matter. It’s a lot.

The fact is that the peoples of the West while disavowing intention to kill, do kill. Gratuitously. In fact, they glory in it.

‘Turns out I’m really good at killing people”” Barack Obama

In the end American fascism is in some ways worse than the Nazi version since it is more insidious—and goes on and on and on. It has legs.

Hitler’s Reich limped. It was primitive and primitivistic. It didn’t last long. The American Reich endures. It is postmodern and sophisticated.

Germany was one man—Hitler— using a typewriter. Atavistic. America is thousands of people with Ivy League degrees and office 2023 and Windows 12.

But that invisible Government that Bernays talked about is becoming visible. With inequality. it’s hard to hide a Lamborghini—much less Hunter Biden’s drugs and whores and corruption— or Joe’s dementia.

Hitler had anti-Semitism. The Western world has Russophobia and Sinophobia. The Israelis have anti-Arabism. There is ultimately no difference. They are all attempts to dehumanize ethnicities. All Big Lies.

The problem starts very, very young.

We are brought up to think this way, The media do not so much create as pander to the narratives we learn in the cradle, kindergarten and grade school. Children love stories and picture books. When we get older, we have “narratives” and YouTube.

Right now, the Big Story is Israel and Hamas’s attack. How much is true? How much is rumor? Was this attack— or counterattack? If you look at the mainstream media, it is impossible to know. Wait until the smoke clears. Search the Internet. Look for contradictions. Assume nothing. There will be lies of all sizes— big and small.

If you look at the stock market however, you will see that all of the military industrial companies in the US have posted huge gains. Cui bono?

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/Sprinter99800/status/1715475920574623812

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/AJEnglish/status/1715545956135899571

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/MayadeenEnglish/status...16877734793703

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https://x.com/MayadeenEnglish/status...14094692463033

[Ravenlocke]

Text:
"We are determined to destroy it."

More Israeli savagery is rising to the surface. In an interview with the BBC, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak admits the Israeli occupation is determined to destroy a hospital full of innocent civilians.

Barak later retracted his statement and contradicted himself, promising that "Israel" would "never" attack a hospital when it is full of civilians.

A quick reminder: The Israeli occupation bombed al-Ahli Baptist Hospital and brutally murdered more than 400 civilians, most of whom were women and children helplessly taking shelter in a supposedly safe hospital.

https://x.com/MayadeenEnglish/status...01952841195857

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https://x.com/MayadeenEnglish/status...58791461183536

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/MayadeenEnglish/status...01315689025926

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/...on-captives:-b

Gaza invasion delayed over US pressing 'Israel' on captives: Bloomberg

US and European governments are intensifying pressure on the Israeli occupation to postpone its planned ground invasion of Gaza with the aim of creating a window of opportunity for the release of hostages, Bloomberg reported on Saturday.

Reportedly, according to people familiar with the matter, secret negotiations currently taking place through Qatar to secure the release of Israelis and foreign nationals taken captive by Hamas.

The delicate nature of the negotiations with Hamas has raised concerns about the likelihood of success, the US outlet said, though there are signs the Palestinian Resistance is willing to release some captives without asking for any prisoners in return due to them being foreign civilians. Two American women have already been freed.

The Israeli occupation has conceded to US pressure and decided to postpone their ground invasion of Gaza in what they see as "retaliation" for Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which took place two weeks ago and saw the Palestinian Resistance movement taking captive somewhere between 200-250 people, including foreign nationals, illegal Israeli settlers, and occupying soldiers.

Captive 'crisis'

These captives are being held within Gaza, where the Israeli occupation is conducting indiscriminate airstrikes that have reportedly killed several Israelis and foreigners, as "Tel Aviv" did not take into consideration its own people when it came to bombarding the Gaza Strip.

The White House declined to comment on the situation, and so did the Israeli government.

On October 16th, Hamas' armed wing, Al-Aqsa Brigades, said non-Israeli captives would be released "when circumstances on the ground allow."

The Resistance movement also reassured the families of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons that the Resistance has made a promise to itself and is determined to bring joy to every Palestinian home regarding the prisoners' file.

Hamas announced late Friday the release of an American woman and her daughter, stating that this was in response to efforts from Qatar. Subsequently, both the Israeli occupation and the United States confirmed the release of these captives.

Qatar, meanwhile, voiced its commitment to continuing dialogue with both Israelis and the Palestinian Resistance, with the hope that these efforts will ultimately lead to the release of all captives who do not have military affiliations.

The United States and its allies have dispatched a series of high-ranking officials to "Tel Aviv" since the October 7 operation. Their mission is to urge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right cabinet to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and "minimize civilian casualties" should a ground invasion take place. However, the Israeli occupation has been doing everything but keeping civilian casualties to a minimum throughout its onslaught on Gaza.

Gaza quite the pickle

Netanyahu has been claiming that he wants to "eradicate Hamas" in Gaza but also secure the release of the captives, which could prove to be quite an arduous task.

Today, the Israeli occupation recalled more than 300,000 mostly inexperienced reservists in order to invade Gaza on foot as it promises to minimize civilian casualties.

The Israeli newspaper "Maariv" reported that the IOF had brought in reinforcements along the border with the Gaza Strip, noting that it had pushed tanks and heavy artillery to 20 locations.

However, it is significant to note that Palestinian Resistance fighters continue to be present throughout multiple Gaza envelope settlements, as confrontations remain ongoing on that front.

Moreover, the separation fence, built by "Israel" to segregate the Gaza Strip, has been breached in tens of spots, making it very difficult to contain the strip, especially without securing the envelope settlements.

Sky News' military analyst Sean Bell said last week a ground invasion into Gaza is considered a "very high risk" for "Israel".

The Israeli military has gathered soldiers and tanks along the border, fueling speculation of a potential invasion. However, Israeli leaders have not yet confirmed any decision. In light of this, analysts suggest that a ground invasion could be launched within a matter of hours or days.

Bell, who served in the British Royal Air Force and left in 2012 as Air Vice Marshal, stressed that sending troops into populated areas in Gaza represents a “high-risk strategy” for Israel.

He said "Urban fighting is very, very dangerous - every corner, every doorway, every window might hide a potential threat," suggesting that the IOF will be very exposed.

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/MayadeenEnglish/status...97221242331396

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/AJEnglish/status/1715487737556422918

[Ravenlocke]

https://x.com/OnlinePalEng/status/1715436158702756037

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https://x.com/OnlinePalEng/status/1715430501131972730