As Palestinians pushes for statehood, Israel finds itself more isolated

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SECOND

Thursday, June 13, 2024 5:38 PM

Vol. 46 No. 12 · 20 June 2024 · London Review of Books
Israel’s Descent by Adam Shatz

Book review of The State of Israel v. the Jews
by Sylvain Cypel, translated by William Rodarmor.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n12/adam-shatz/israel-s-descent

When Ariel Sharon withdrew more than eight thousand Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, his principal aim was to consolidate Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank, where the settler population immediately began to increase. But ‘disengagement’ had another purpose: to enable Israel’s air force to bomb Gaza at will, something they could not do when Israeli settlers lived there. The Palestinians of the West Bank have been, it seems, gruesomely lucky. They are encircled by settlers determined to steal their lands – and not at all hesitant about inflicting violence in the process – but the Jewish presence in their territory has spared them the mass bombardment and devastation to which Israel subjects the people of Gaza every few years.

The Israeli government refers to these episodes of collective punishment as ‘mowing the lawn’. In the last fifteen years, it has launched five offensives in the Strip. The first four were brutal and cruel, as colonial counterinsurgencies invariably are, killing thousands of civilians in retribution for Hamas rocket fire and hostage-taking. But the latest, Operation Iron Swords, launched on 7 October in response to Hamas’s murderous raid in southern Israel, is different in kind, not merely in degree. Over the last eight months, Israel has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians. An untold number remain under the debris and still more will die of hunger and disease. Eighty thousand Palestinians have been injured, many of them permanently maimed. Children whose parents – whose entire families – have been killed constitute a new population sub-group. Israel has destroyed Gaza’s housing infrastructure, its hospitals and all its universities. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced, some of them repeatedly; many have fled to ‘safe’ areas only to be bombed there. No one has been spared: aid workers, journalists and medics have been killed in record numbers. And as levels of starvation have risen, Israel has created one obstacle after another to the provision of food, all while insisting that its army is the ‘most moral’ in the world. The images from Gaza – widely available on TikTok, which Israel’s supporters in the US have tried to ban, and on Al Jazeera, whose Jerusalem office was shut down by the Israeli government – tell a different story, one of famished Palestinians killed outside aid trucks on Al-Rashid Street in February; of tent-dwellers in Rafah burned alive in Israeli air strikes; of women and children subsisting on 245 calories a day. This is what Benjamin Netanyahu describes as ‘the victory of Judaeo-Christian civilisation against barbarism’.

More at https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n12/adam-shatz/israel-s-descent

Download Sylvain Cypel's The State of Israel v. the Jews for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Sylvain+Cypel

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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SECOND

Monday, July 8, 2024 6:42 PM

The Israeli military ordered the "Hannibal Directive" on 7 October, according to a report in the Israeli media on Sunday 07 July, 2024.

The "Hannibal Directive" is a military protocol where Israeli soldiers would kill captives and their captors to stop enemies from being able to use Israeli citizens as bargaining chips.

https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-army-ordered-hannibal-directive-7
-october-report

The directive dates back to the 1980s but was revised after Hamas members abducted a soldier in 2006. While it officially does not allow soldiers to kill captives intentionally, it has been used and interpreted in this way by Israel on multiple occasions.

Haaretz obtained documents and testimonies from soldiers and mid-level and senior army officials revealing orders and procedures by the army's Gaza Division, showing the procedure was widespread "from the first hours following the [7 October] attack and at various points along the border".

A "very senior" army source confirmed to Haaretz that the procedure was used on 7 October. The division was given the order by Israeli command that "not a single vehicle can return to Gaza", which the army understood as a green light to implement the directive.

While the publication does not know how many civilians and soldiers were hit, cumulative data shows many of the captives were at risk and exposed to Israeli gunfire, even if they were not the target.

Haaretz notes the directive was used throughout the morning of 7 October and was employed at many locations Hamas had infiltrated, including the Erez border crossing, the Re'im army base, and the Nahal Oz outpost.

One incident where it is known that the army hit civilians was in the house of Pessi Cohen at Kibbutz Be'eri, where 13 out of 14 captives were killed.

"The instruction," says the Haaretz source in Southern Command, "was meant to turn the area around the [Gaza] border fence into a killing zone, closing it off toward the west." Israel forces allegedly opened fire indiscriminately on any suspected case of Hamas abducting citizens or fleeing back into Gaza.

As Haaretz's source further puts it: "all forces in the area received permission to open fire at anyone approaching the border area, without any restrictions."

The army is expected to publish results on whether the division commander in charge of operations in Be'eri implemented the Hannibal Directive.

The Israeli army has admitted in the past to using the Hannibal Directive but has refused to say whether it was ordered on 7 October.

The same publication reported an investigation by the Israeli police found that an Israeli military helicopter opened fire at people who attended the Nova music festival during the Hamas attack.

Another Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, in January also reported the Israeli army implementing the protocol on 7 October, stating the army was issued orders to prevent "infiltrators" from returning to Gaza "at any cost", even at the expense of killing hostages.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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SECOND

Wednesday, July 17, 2024 7:43 PM

Deceive, defy, and defer: Netanyahu’s time-tested strategy to outmaneuver Biden

For 15 years, the Israeli prime minister has proven his ability to scuttle political agreements — while never losing the United States’ backing.

By Lev Grinberg | July 16, 2024

https://www.972mag.com/deceive-defy-defer-netanyahu-biden/

Watching President Joe Biden clumsily debate Donald Trump on June 27, many Israelis could instantly recognize how their own prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been able to exploit the weaknesses of the aging commander-in-chief for so long.

Netanyahu has had a close relationship with his “friend Joe” for decades, going back to Biden’s days in the U.S. Senate and especially during the early years of the Barack Obama administration. According to Biden’s biographer Evan Osnos, the then-vice president served as a key mediator between Netanyahu and Obama as tensions grew between the two leaders, with Biden consistently advocating dialogue and preventing open confrontations.

The Israeli prime minister knows this all too well. And it is precisely that intimate and historical knowledge of Biden, American politics, and U.S. support for Israel that has helped Netanyahu stay in power almost uninterrupted since 2009, and even more so since October 7. With this knowledge, Netanyahu has also consistently been able to rebuff efforts in Washington to achieve its stated goal of a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine — tactics that the Israeli prime minister continues to use today to prolong the war in Gaza.

On June 14, 2009, Netanyahu delivered a historic speech at Bar Ilan University, near Tel Aviv, calling to reopen negotiations toward the establishment of a “demilitarized Palestinian state.” It was 10 days after Obama’s speech in Cairo calling for “a new beginning” in the relations between the United States and the Muslim world, including through the fulfillment of a Palestinian state. But after a year of vacuous talks, Netanyahu refused to abide by Washington’s demands to freeze settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, bringing the negotiations to a stalemate.

Netanyahu only continued to defy the Obama administration over the following years, with no political consequences. In May 2011, Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress, calling for an Israeli presence along the Jordan River and a united Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and was met with 29 standing ovations from both Republicans and Democrats. Another speech in Congress by Netanyahu in 2015 sought to undermine the president’s multilateral diplomacy with Iran regarding its nuclear facilities. Yet despite suffering these political and increasingly personal indignities, Obama ended his presidency by signing the largest ever U.S. military aid package to Israel, to the tune of $38 billion over 10 years.

Since Hamas’ October 7 attack, Netanyahu appears to be seeking to repeat his success with Obama — namely by wasting time until the U.S. election in November, exploiting Biden’s unconditional support for Israel, and preventing the implementation of the “Biden doctrine for the Middle East.” This task is much easier today than it was in 2009: instead of Fatah, the main Palestinian counterpart is now Hamas; the starting point of the debate is the October 7 massacre, which provoked immediate international support for Israel’s lethal response; and instead of eight years of manipulations, he now needs only four more months — a piece of cake for Netanyahu.

When Biden laid out his ceasefire proposal on May 31, he called on the Israelis to support the plan. It was an attempt to exert domestic pressure on Netanyahu, while tacitly recognizing that the United States would not use all its leverage with Israel. In response, Netanyahu took a page from Trump’s playbook and simply lied about the Biden administration’s suspension of a weapons shipment earlier in May — giving Republicans political fodder to attack the president.

In his upcoming speech to Congress on July 24, Netanyahu will further entrench his role in th

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JAYNEZTOWN

Thursday, July 25, 2024 4:38 AM

the insanity continues

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JAYNEZTOWN

Saturday, August 24, 2024 2:30 AM

So the DeathCount so far

?
Palestine Gaza civilian or jihad islamic types
40,265+ killed
6,000 to 20,000+ missing
also dead islamic Terrorist / Political Militants dead inside Israel


Israel

907 Jewish civilians killed
768 security forces killed

many also missing and taken hostage

?

a conflict also possibly spreading to Yemen, Lebanon and Syria


Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza, southern Lebanon amid push for cease-fire

https://www.voanews.com/a/israeli-airstrikes-hit-gaza-southern-lebanon
-amid-push-for-cease-fire/7752378.html

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SIGNYM

Sunday, August 25, 2024 1:49 AM

Quote:

---

Dire Warnings As Israel's Fascists Have Taken Over The Rein

Alastair Crooke is a former MI6 agent and negotiator of hostage releases in the Middle East. He has an intimate knowledge of Israel.

Recently Crooke has written a lot about the internal changes in Israel. The supremacist settlers have taken over the rein:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is another warning.

The Shin Bet is the internal security service of Israel. It reports directly to the prime minister.

When the head of the Shin Bet goes public with a warning as copied below the situation is more than serious.

Shaiel Ben-Ephraim @academic_la - 18:30 UTC · Aug 22, 2024

Ronen Bar, head of the Shin Bet sent the most dire letter I have seen, warning against the emerging threat of settler terrorism. He believes it is supported by many in the system and is going to grow into a movement that will threaten the well-being of Israel. Here are the most important portions of the letter, as reported by Guy Peleg of Channel 12:

"I am writing you this letter in pain. In deep fear. As a Jew, as an Israeli, and as a security official, I learned about the increasing phenomenon of Jewish terrorism by the hilltop youth. The hilltop youth phenomenon has long created a significant amount of terrorism towards Palestinians.

... the phenomenon [Jewish terrorism] is changing and becoming more significant. From the work of individuals, it is now taken up by hundreds.

... Along with the money they receive when freed and the praise they receive from members of Knesset, alongside the delegitimization of security services. It has moved from secretive and narrow activity to open and large-scale organization. Sometimes, it is due to the use of weapons provided by the state. From avoiding the security forces to attacking them. From disconnecting from the es

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