Tuesday, April 23, 2024, marked the 200th consecutive day of Israel’s large-scale military offensive on the Gaza Strip. Nearly 90 percent of the population is displaced, with many living in dire conditions in tents, and the few remaining schools used as shelters. Despite the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures orders to prevent genocide, Israel persists in threatening a large-scale ground invasion of Rafah, home to over 1.2 million residents and displaced persons—a threat that has loomed over the Palestinian people there for several weeks.
Our organizations — the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan, and Al-Haq — are closely monitoring and deeply concerned about the escalation of Israeli airstrikes on Rafah. The tactics of intensified bombing of homes using heavy artillery and carpet bombing are alarming and have resulted in significant civilian casualties over the last six months.
Furthermore, concerns are growing as reports from Israeli media indicate that the Israeli army is purchasing thousands of tents to accommodate displaced individuals from Rafah. The Israeli plan to expand the so-called safe zone in the Al-Mawasi area, despite its limited capacity and current overcrowding with displaced persons, is also troubling. This expansion is purportedly capable of housing up to a million people, but the reality of its size (extending about a kilometer deep from the borders of Khan Younis to the borders of Rafah) raises doubts about its feasibility and effectiveness in addressing the humanitarian crisis.
Our organizations have repeatedly warned and expressed serious concerns about the potential consequences of a large-scale ground invasion on Rafah, similar to what has occurred in most governorates of the Gaza Strip. Such an invasion could lead to horrific massacres and raise scenarios of a second Nakba. The densely populated city, with hundreds of thousands of displaced individuals residing in tents and heavily relying on aid from the Rafah and Kerem Abu Salem Crossings, exacerbates the vulnerability of its population. The closure of these vital crossings during a potential Israeli attack would leave no suitable alternatives for the evacuation of Rafah residents and those already displaced within the city. This concern is compounded by the continued attacks and destruction that have altered the landscape of the Gaza Strip.
According to the latest update from the Palestinian Ministry of Health on April 23, 2024, Israeli military attacks over the span of 200 days have led to the killing of 34,183 Palestinians, including 14,778 children and around 10,000 women, and the injury of 77,143 others. One child is killed or injured every 10 minutes in Gaza. An estimated seven to eight thousand Palestinians are still missing, buried under the rubble, or in the streets. There have been ongoing efforts over the past few days to retrieve some of them, amid reports of finding individuals bound and buried in mass graves in Nasser and Al-Shifa Hospitals, indicating the possibility of them being killed by the Israeli army after their arrest. All of this requires the opening of a serious and independent international investigation. It is worth noting that citizens have been forced to create temporary graves in hospitals, markets, streets, and near destroyed homes due to the impossibility of transporting the people killed to official cemeteries.
After 200 days of horrific genocidal acts in Gaza, the real objectives of the attack are the continuation of the 76-year-long ongoing Nakba and the erasure and genocidal destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Israel is laying the groundwork to fulfill its settler colonial plan of colonizing Gaza, played out in real time on the world’s television sets and screens. We warn that the risks of displacement are still present unless the international community intervenes effectively to prevent them.
Our organisations reiterate that silence from the international community is no longer acceptable, and mere statements of condemnation are not enough in the face of genocide and systematic and deliberate crimes to destroy the foundations of Palestinian life.
Our organizations warn of the threat of an Israeli ground invasion on Rafah. Such an attack would represent the peak of the Israeli attack on Gaza, with the intent of inflicting the highest number of casualties and civilian victims, potentially leading to mass forcible displacement towards the Egyptian borders, located mere meters away. This scenario threatens the acceleration of the Nakba on the Palestinian people and is an approaching reality.
We urgently call on the permanent members of the UN Security Council, the UN Secretary-General, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights to swiftly intervene to avert the continuing Nakba and to halt the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Our organisations warn Third States that they may be complicit in genocide through their unlimited military and financial support of Israel’s aggression on the Gaza Strip. We remind the Third States of their erga omnes obligations to protect the Palestinian people from genocide.
We further urge the international community to secure the right of return of Palestinians to their areas of residence and ensure the provision of essential services, including access to clean water, reopening closed roads, and other necessary support.
We emphasize that the key to resolving the crisis in the region forever lies in ending the illegal occupation, dismantling the Israeli settler-colonial apartheid regime, revoking all discriminatory and inhumane laws, policies, and practices against the Palestinian people as a whole, and enabling the Palestinian people to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and the return of refugees without any conditions or restrictions.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.’ His other books include ‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth.’ Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
Ramzy Baroud
The Palestinian city of Rafah is not just older than Israel; it is as old as civilization itself.
It has existed for thousands of years. The Canaanites referred to it as Rafia, and Rafia has been almost always there, guarding the southern frontiers of Palestine, ancient and modern.
As the gateway between two continents and two worlds, Rafah has been at the forefront of many wars and foreign invasions, from ancient Egyptians to the Romans to Napoleon and his eventually vanquished army.
Now, it is Benjamin Netanyahu’s turn. The Israeli Prime Minister has made Rafah the jewel of his crown of shame, the battle that would determine the fate of his genocidal war in Gaza – in fact, the very future of his country. “Those who want to prevent us from operating in Rafah are essentially telling us: ‘Lose the war,’” he said at a press conference on February 17.
There are around 1.3 to 1.5 million people in Rafah, an area that, before the war started, had a population of merely 200 thousand people.
Even before the start of this genocidal war, Rafah was still considered crowded. We can only imagine what the situation is right now, where hundreds of thousands of people are scattered in muddy refugee camps, subsisting in makeshift tents that are unable to withstand the elements of a harsh winter.
The Mayor of Rafah says that only 10 percent of the needed food and water is reaching the population in the camps, where the people are suffering from extreme hunger, if not outright starvation.
These families are beyond traumatized as they have lost loved ones and homes and have no access to any medical care. They are trapped between high walls, the sea and a murderous military.
An Israeli invasion of Rafah will not alter the battlefield in favor of the Israeli army, but it will be horrific for the displaced Palestinians. The slaughter will go beyond everything we have seen so far anywhere in Gaza.
A child wounded in an Israeli bombing is brought to Al Najjar hospital in Rafah, Feb. 24, 2024. Fatima Shbair | AP
Where will up to 1.5 million people go when the Israeli tanks arrive? The closest so-called safe area is al-Mawasi, which is already overcrowded and too small to begin with. The displaced refugees there are also experiencing starvation due to Israel’s prevention of aid and constant bombing of convoys.
Then, there is northern Gaza, which is mostly in ruins; it has no food to the extent that, in some areas, even animal feed, which humans are now consuming, is no longer accessible.
Suppose the international community does not finally develop the will to stop Israel. In that case, this horrific crime will, by far, prove worse than all the crimes that have already been committed, resulting in the death and wounding of over 100,000 people.
Even with the invasion of Rafah, Israel would achieve no military or strategic victory. Netanyahu wants to satisfy the calls for blood emanating from throughout Israel. After all of this, they are still seeking revenge. “I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza,” Israel’s Minister of Social Equality, May Golan, said at a Knesset session on February 21.
But, still, there will be no victory in Rafah, either.
At the start of the war, Israel said Hamas was primarily concentrated in the north. The north was duly destroyed, though the Resistance carried on unabated. Then they claimed that the Resistance headquarters was under Shifa Hospital, which was bombed, raided and destroyed. Then they claimed Bureij, Maghazi and central Gaza were the main prize of the war. Then, Khan Younis was declared the ‘capital of Hamas’. And on and on…
Aside from the mass destruction and the killing of hundreds of civilians daily, Israel has won nothing; the Resistance has not been defeated, and the alleged ‘Hamas capital’ has conveniently shifted from one city to another, even from one neighborhood to another.
Now, the same ridiculous claims and unsubstantiated allegations are being made and leveled against Rafah, where most of Gaza’s population ran to, in total despair, to survive the onslaught.
Children desperately clamor for food in Rafah, Feb. 23, 2024. Fatima Shbair | AP
Israel had initially hoped that Gazans would rush in their hundreds of thousands to the Sinai Desert. They did not. Then Israeli leaders, like far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, began speaking of “voluntary migration” as the “right humanitarian solution.” Still, the Palestinians stayed. Now, they have all agreed on the invasion of Rafah, a last-ditch effort to orchestrate another Palestinian Nakba.
But another Nakba will not happen. Palestinians will not allow it to happen.
Ultimately, Netanyahu’s and Israel’s political madness must come to an end.
The world cannot persist in this cowardly inaction.
The lives of millions of Palestinians are dependent on our collective push to bring this genocide to an immediate end.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is ‘Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out.’ His other books include ‘My Father was a Freedom Fighter’ and ‘The Last Earth’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
Law number one in the ‘law of holes’ is that “if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Law number two, “If you are not digging, you are still in a hole.”
These adages sum up Israel’s ongoing political, military and strategic crises, 100 days following the start of the war on Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was faced with the unprecedented challenge of having to react to a major attack launched by Palestinian Resistance in southern Israel on October 7.
This single event is already proving to be a game changer in the relationship between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Its impact will be felt for many years, if not generations, to come.
Netanyahu was already in a hole long before the Al-Aqsa Flood operation took place, and he had no one else to blame but himself.
To stay in power and to avoid three major corruption cases and subsequent trials, Netanyahu labored to fortify his position at the helm of Israeli politics with the help of the most extreme government ever assembled in a state whose very existence is an outcome of an extremist ideology.
Even the anti-Netanyahu mass protests throughout Israel, which also took place for months before the war, did not alert the Israeli leader that the hole was getting deeper and that the Palestinians, living under a perpetual military occupation and siege, could find in Israel’s political and military crises an opportunity.
He simply kept on digging.
October 7 should not be perceived as a surprise attack since the entire Gaza Division, the massive Israeli military build-up in the Gaza envelope, exists for the very purpose of ensuring that Gaza’s subjugation and siege were perfected according to state-of-the-art military technology.
This advanced military capability meant that no surprise attacks should have been possible because it is not humans but sophisticated machines that scan, intercept, and report on every perceived suspicious movement. In the Israeli case, the failure was profound and multi-layered.
Subsequently, following October 7, Netanyahu found himself in a much deeper hole. Instead of finding his way out by, for example, taking responsibility, unifying his people, or, God forbid, acknowledging that war is never an answer in the face of a resisting, oppressed population, he kept on digging.
The Israeli leader, flanked by far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, and Amichai Eliyahu, worsened matters by using the war on Gaza as an opportunity to implement long-dormant plans of ethnically cleansing Palestinians, not only from the Gaza Strip but also the West Bank.
Were it not for the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and strong rejection by Egypt and Jordan, the second Nakba would have been a reality.
All mainstream Israeli politicians, despite their ideological and political differences, unanimously outdid one another in their racist, violent, and even genocidal language. While Defense Minister Yoav Gallant immediately announced that “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed” to the Gaza population, Avi Dichter called for “another Nakba.”
Meanwhile, Eliyahu suggested the ‘option’ of “dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza.”
Instead of saving Israel from itself by reminding the Tel Aviv government that the genocidal war on Gaza would also bode poorly for Tel Aviv, the US Biden Administration served the role of cheerleader and outright partner.
Aside from an additional $14 billion of emergency aid package, Washington has reportedly sent, as of December 25, 230 airplanes and 20 ships loaded with armaments and munitions.
According to a New York Times report on January 12, the CIA is also actively involved in collecting information from Gaza and providing that intelligence to Israel.
US support for Israel, in all its forms, has been maintained despite the shocking reports issued by every respected international charity that operates in Palestine and the Middle East.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said that 1.9 million out of Gaza’s entire population of 2.3 million people have been displaced. Israeli rights group B’tselem said that 2.2 million are starving. Save the Children reported that over 100 Palestinian children are killed daily. Gaza’s government media office has said that about 70 percent of the Strip has been destroyed.
Even the Wall Street Journal concluded that the destruction of Gaza was greater than that of Dresden in WWII.
Yet, none of this concerned US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who visited the region five times in less than 100 days with the same message of support for Israel.
What is so astonishing, however, is that Gaza’s threshold of resilience continues to prove unequaled. This is how determined the Palestinians are to achieve their freedom finally.
Indeed, fathers or mothers, in a scene repeated numerous times, would be carrying the bodies of their dead children while howling in pain, yet insisting that they would never leave their homeland.
This dignified pain has moved the world. Even though Washington has ensured no meaningful action will be taken at the UN Security Council, countries like South Africa sought the help of the world’s highest court to demand an immediate end to the war and to recognize Israel’s atrocities as an act of genocide.
South Africa’s efforts at the International Court of Justice soon galvanized other countries, mainly in the Global South.
But Netanyahu kept on digging, unmoved, or possibly unaware that the world around him was finally beginning to truly understand the generational suffering of the Palestinians.
The Israeli leader still speaks of ‘voluntary migration,’ of wanting to manage Gaza and Palestine, and of reshaping the Middle East in ways consistent with his illusions of grandeur and power.
One hundred days of the war on Gaza has taught us that superior firepower no longer influences outcomes when a nation makes the collective decision to resist.
It has also taught us that the US can no longer reorder the Middle East to fit Israeli priorities and that relatively small countries in the Global South when united, can alter the course of history.
Netanyahu may continue digging, but history has already been written: the spirit of the Palestinian people has won over Israel’s death machine.
One major theme of Homer’s Iliad – which somehow seems as fresh and as vivid today as when first written – is its description of how even the greatest of states in Western civilization fail to reclaim what they lose. “Attempts to repair one loss lead only to more losses”, Emily Wilson writes in her introduction to the Iliad (2023). “Loss can never be recouped.”
As Wilson sets out her story, one cannot escape the analogy to today – to a Biden seeking to recoup the American ‘reputation’ (Kleos in Greek ). In the case of leaders of the ancient world too, the goal of achieving undying kleos runs through the poem.
Today, we might refer to it as one’s ‘legacy’. In the Iliad it is definitional and gives mortal leaders the chance to live on after death with honour and glory. For Team Biden, Ukraine was supposed to be their Troy. Russia, like Hector, was tricked into a fight and (and as Team Biden had hoped) is killed under Troy’s walls.
But in today’s world, it didn’t work out that way. And now the U.S. faces the humiliation of a clear Russian victory in Ukraine, and a collective Russian leadership that says it intends to retrieve all lands and cities that were culturally Russian. Western Ukraine, they say, can go ‘wherever it likes’.
The military facts on the ground are relentless and cannot be undone. But the White House hopes to keep a morsel of kleos by simply having Ukrainian forces ceasing to fight, falling back onto defensive lines – yet never saying ‘defeat’. The kinetic component to the conflict barely would ‘tick over’ at low revs. And, as Gideon Rachman has written in the Financial Times, to “flip the narrative to one of [repeatedly insisting] that Putin has failed”. The aim being that Washington quietly can ‘steal away’.
Well, there are two big problems: First, Russia doesn’t agree; it doesn’t agree at all. And secondly, Zelensky and his associates were grievously tricked. Not in this case, by the goddess Athena, but by the mortal Messrs Johnson and Blinken.
In March 2022 in Istanbul, Zelensky and his negotiators had reached an accord with Russia. But that agreement ‘was killed’ by Boris Johnson urging Zelensky to fight on, and to gain his portion of the ‘honour and glory’ by participating in the slaying of the Russian aggressor.
“As long as it takes – and whatever it takes” was the solemn ‘oath’. That is, so to speak, Zelensky was promised an open cheque and whatever weaponry would be needed …
So, what happened to that which is now gone?
If this were the Iliad, the storyline would at least, in part, focus on Zelensky’s disappointment at his tiny ‘portion of life’. Wilson writes:
“Many of the words in the Iliad are often translated as fortune or fate – literally, these suggest we get a portion or share … It’s as if there is a whole side of beef that is a quantity of human life and each of us gets a particular portion of it, both how long we get to be alive and also our portion of honor and glory”.
Zelensky will have wanted a portion of honour to compensate him for fate having dealt-out his present portion of life in an unfair way (i.e. by having been tricked by British and U.S. assurances).
The public humiliation Zelensky now suffers will no longer be balanced by a large share of glory gained through a vanquished Moscow. In the Homeric vein, this lays the ground for an act of revenge on Biden – publication of the ‘deal’.
When these details emerge – as surely they will (echoing perhaps, the mysterious and reputationally explosive war-time Churchill letters hinting to Mussolini at some ultimate kleos-esque outcome) – then the ‘victory narrative’ may become soured by the insistent question: Tens of thousands of Ukrainian young men had to die between March and now – for what?
The other theme in the Iliad is that of the prized facility of mêtis. It could be thought to be the ‘wiliness’ (or long-experienced cleverness) on which Biden is known to so pride himself: Should something unexpected happen and you react (subconsciously) just right in the moment, then by displaying mêtis, you receive a special kind of glory, as compared to that gained from the trudge of geo-political campaigning.
On 7 October, Hamas exploded out from its’ Gaza enclosure.
Biden reportedly regards himself as having ‘the smarts’ over Netanyahu. He knows Netanyahu thinks to manipulate Biden, but the latter believes he both is containing Netanyahu and pre-empting his plans by keeping them under close U.S. surveillance.
But a ‘green light’ is a green light.
And in essence the Biden embrace ends by giving the Israeli Cabinet a conditional ‘green-light’ for almost all its projects, bar the Settler arsonists in the West Bank.
Israel’s Gaza military operation is visibly failing, though the aerial bombardment is set to continue through the coming weeks. It never had a military logic, and this is becoming evident to many Israelis. Gaza is already a monument to callous inhumanity and suffering. It will get worse – yet the Gazans will endure and remain defiant.
And the Israeli military operation against Hizbullah also stands ‘green-lighted’, albeit only when Hochstein’s diplomatic effort to push a disarmed Hizbullah back behind the Litani River (predictably) fails. What is the White House thinking? Do they recall the 2006 war? Do they understand how formidable an adversary Hizbullah has become? Do they not see how Israel is provoking Hizbullah and Iran?
Can Biden recoup America’s standing in this way – with the ‘cleansing’ in Gaza; eruptions in the West Bank; and war brewing with Hizbullah? Biden clearly wants some portion of honour to accrue to him that compensates for the humiliation he suffers from Netanyahu. So he has to keep going.
Emily Wilson reminds us: “Attempts to repair one loss (such as Ukraine), historically lead to more losses: Loss can never fully be recouped”.
U.S. policy of ‘embrace and question’ nonetheless is driving Israel towards a binary choice: three internal military wars in which Israel risks humiliation, or a resort to population displacement (the Naqba option – one favoured by increasing numbers of Israelis). The two-state ‘solution’ is not an option for the present (or ever).
As for the Naqba option, the moral enormity of such a policy would require the Jewish nation to be absolutely sure of its ground. Is it? In spite of raised levels of anger, works such as The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand, Emeritus Professor of History at Tel Aviv University, must at least raise a current of unease and debate.
The situation however is not one of ratiocination, but of all-consuming irrationality.
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Deporting all Gazans is the joint plan of the US and Israel. According to the plan, the Palestinians will be ‘relocated’ to Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, and Yemen. This large-scale ethnic cleansing is cynically presented as a “moral and humanitarian” aid plan.
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Murderous
In recent war history, there has rarely been such an intensive and massive slaughter of civilians and children as in Gaza, one of the most densely populated places in the world. The destruction of northern Gaza in less than seven weeks approaches the devastation caused by the years of carpet bombing of German cities during World War II.
According to the World Health Organization, a child is killed every ten minutes.
More than half of Gaza City has now been destroyed, including schools and mosques. Hospitals can no longer function. Bakeries are closed and there is almost no drinking water left. Destruction and slaughter are happening on an industrial scale, with the help of Artificial Intelligence.
People were first driven out of the north, but now the south is attacked with heavy bombing and a ground offensive against the town of Khan Younis. According to a top official of the UN humanitarian aid agency, conditions there are now apocalyptic.
No child still has unlimited access to care, food or water. Famine is looming. And because sewers no longer work, there will be mass outbreaks of disease.
Gazans are now being urged to leave for Rafah, the southernmost point of Gaza, where the border post with Egypt is also located.
Officially, Israel’s goal is to eliminate Hamas. But the intensity and ruthlessness with which the Israeli army is acting reveals that this is an excuse for another goal: the complete expulsion of the population from Palestine, starting with Gaza.
According to the Jewish philosopher Moshé Machover, this plan has been in existence for a long time: “We are actually waiting for a time when they can be permanently expelled to neighbouring countries. That will only be possible during a full-scale war and I fear that Israel is prepared to provoke it.” He said this in 2017.
New Deportation Plan
Israel wants to increase the level of inhumanity to such an extent that the residents of Gaza will ultimately have no choice but to leave. That seems to be the hidden plan, although that plan is getting clearer by the day.
A plan, from the Israeli Intelligence Ministry was already leaked in late October. That plan envisaged a final deportation of Gaza’s population to Egypt’s Sinai desert. That was met with a resounding refusal from Cairo.
But Israel is determined to continue this large-scale ethnic cleansing. In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, two Israeli members of the Knesset called on Western countries to accept Palestinian refugees. Gila Gamliel, intelligence minister wrote a similar op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, proposing the “voluntary resettlement” of Palestinians in Gaza to other countries around the world.
Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter does not hesitate to call the current war a ‘Nakba 2023’, referring to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Palestine at the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.
“We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba. From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers. (…) Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
And it is not just words. A new joint US-Israeli plan has now surfaced in which they want to deport the population of Gaza to four countries: Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and Yemen. In this new plan, Egypt should no longer bear the burden alone.
The numbers per country are already known too: a million Palestinians would go to Egypt, half a million to Turkey, 250,000 to Iraq and another 250,000 to Yemen.
The four countries referred to are receiving generous aid from Washington. The plan states that this support will be linked to a willingness to receive Gazans. In other words, the four countries will be put under serious financial and perhaps diplomatic pressure to ‘harbour’ the Gazans.
The key country is Egypt, which must open its border. Joe Wilson, former Republican MP and one of the initiators of this plan, is very clear about this. According to him, “the only moral way [to solve the Gaza problem] is to ensure that Egypt opens its borders”.
“Israel is trying to keep civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip as low as possible, but Hamas is not allowing the refugees to leave and Egypt is unwilling to open its borders,” the authors of the plan write in the opening paragraph. Meanwhile, six children are being slaughtered every hour…
For its planned population move, the plan refers to other recent conflict hotspots. “It would not be the first time other countries have accepted refugees,” the plan says. Here, the authors refer to the six million Ukrainians who fled the country to Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic, among others. Nearly five million Syrians have also “moved” to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, while other Middle Eastern and European countries have taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrians.
The plan has been submitted to key figures in the US House of Representatives and Congress and has the support of both Democrats and Republicans. The planned large-scale ethnic cleansing is cynically presented as a “moral and humanitarian” aid plan:
“The neighbouring borders have been closed for too long, but it is now clear that in order to free the Gazan population from the tyrannical oppression of Hamas and to allow them to live free of war and bloodshed, Israel must encourage the international community to find the correct, moral and humane avenues for the relocation of the Gazan population.”
Truly a fine piece of newspeak.
The plan also firmly lashes out at UNRWA, the UN refugee agency dedicated to aid and development for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. US lawmakers blame the agency of “propagating the refugee narrative” and “inhibiting the rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees for over seventy years and has in fact deepened the refugee crisis”. That’s why they want the agency to be closed down.
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We may be on the eve of a mass deportation of Palestinians, a second Nakba. If Western countries want to retain any shred of credibility, they must take action immediately.
They must immediately impose economic and diplomatic sanctions against Israel and also convene the Security Council to condemn and thwart the sinister plan of the US and Israel. If not, they are complicit in this declared humanitarian disaster.
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Marc Vandepitte is a Belgian economist and philosopher. He writes on North-South relations, Latin America, Cuba, and China. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Girl holds improvised white flag, to tell Israel to respect Geneva Conventions and spare her fleeing family. Photo credit: Yasser Qudih
Once viewed as a fringe group, Israel’s messianic settler movement holds the reins of power today. Their plans for the ethnic cleansing and resettlement of Gaza needed only two things: a big war and an extremist government.
Almost three weeks into Israel’s bloody ground invasion of Gaza, an Israeli soldier filmed a video from inside the bombed and besieged enclave exclaiming, “We will complete the mission we have been assigned. Conquer, expel and settle. You hear that, Bibi?”
Two months into Tel Aviv’s aerial assault of Gaza, its end goals are still unclear. CNNhas revealed that Israel’s “original plan” for the war was to “level Gaza.” And Israeli minister Ron Dermer proposed a plan to “thin out” the Gaza population by forcing civilians to flee to Egypt by land, or to other parts of Africa and Europe by boat, because the “sea is open to them.”
What is certain is that this is like no other Israeli bombing spree on Gaza. In past campaigns, the Israelis sought out international mediators “from the first day” to broker a ceasefire within days or weeks.
This time, however, the Israelis and their American supporters most decidedly do not want a ceasefire. While their end goals for Gaza have shifted in this conflict, it is equally important to note that Tel Aviv’s plans for that future may be entirely different from Washington’s. Simply, Israel has never had a government as right-wing as the current one cobbled together by its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; a cabinet heaving with religious fundamentalists and messianic fervor.
Plans to ‘reclaim’ Gaza
The roots of Israel’s current campaign to conquer Gaza and ethnically cleanse its 2.3 million Palestinian inhabitants trace back almost two decades, originating with the evacuation of the Gush Katif settlement bloc in 2005.
This move, orchestrated by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, aimed at continued Jewish settlement and military occupation in the occupied West Bank, but was deemed treacherous by Israel’s uber right-wing, religious settler movement.
It was Ariel Sharon, “the father of settlements,” who designed the Gaza disengagement to ensure continued Jewish settlement and military occupation of the West Bank, but the religious settler movement viewed him as a traitor for giving up “Jewish land,” just as they viewed former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin as a traitor for signing the Oslo Accords to eventually establish a Palestinian state.
Rabin was murdered by Jewish extremist Yigal Amir in 1995, in an act publicly encouraged by a young but prominent religious settler activist, Itamar Ben Gvir.
Another young religious settler, Bezalel Smotrich, was arrested for opposing Sharon’s disengagement policy. To stop Gaza disengagement, Smotrich wanted to blow up cars on the Ayalon highway, at rush hour, using 700 liters of gasoline.
Both men are today allies and prominent ideologues in Netanyahu’s extremist coalition government.
Over the next 18 years, the Likud Party and the religious settler movement, led by figures such as Ben Gvir and Smotrich, harbored dreams of reconquering Gaza to reconstruct Gush Katif. This undertaking would entail completing the expulsion initiated by Zionist militias in 1948, as noted by Israeli historian Benny Morris, by forcing Gazans into exile and preventing their return.
In 2010, then Prime Minister Netanyahu and Knesset member (MK) Gila Gamliel, both Likud members, proposed to the late Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the settlement of Palestinians in the Sinai peninsula as part of a peace deal-related land swap.
After insisting, “I’m not even willing to listen to those kinds of proposals,” Mubarak was toppled in a US-orchestrated color revolution, part of the region-wide ‘Arab Spring,’ as it was known.
Netanyahu proposed a similar deal to Mubarak’s successor Mohammad Morsi in 2012, and to Morsi’s successor, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in 2014, but these yielded the same outcomes.
In 2014, during Israel’s brutal 51-day assault on Gaza, Netanyahu sought US intervention with Sisi to propose settling Palestinians in Sinai, but got nowhere. Over 2,300 civilians were killed in that military operation – yet another of Israel’s “mowing the grass” campaigns to inflict setbacks for the resistance, without making any meaningful gains against Hamas.
The plan takes shape
By June 2018, reports surfaced of a new Israeli army plan to “create a considerable change in the situation if it is required to launch a major campaign in Gaza.” This would involve moving beyond temporary bombardment to offensive missions involving elite units who “will enter Gaza and dissect it in two, and even occupy significant parts of it.”
Meanwhile, in 2019, fundamentalist settlers like Ben Gvir continued to express a fervent desire to level Gaza and return to rebuild Gush Katif.
Ahead of the 2022 Knesset elections, three extreme right-wing political parties united to form the Religious Zionism Coalition. These included the Religious Zionism party, headed by Smotrich, the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, headed by Ben Gvir, and Noam, a small ultra-orthodox party.
In July 2022, Religious Zionist candidate Arnon Segal wrote during his campaign announcement: “It is time to begin to plan a return to Gush Katif.”
“Yes,” he wrote, “to physically return and rebuild it.”
That September, as the elections drew closer, i24 News, an outlet close to Netanyahu, addressed the issue of Gush Katif, calling it a “lingering wound,” one still open and fresh for Israelis.
“It’s a trauma,” an Israeli named Hillel quoted by i24 News said. “The whole country was hurting.”
The ‘legality’ of the settlers’ return
The effort to rebuild Gush Katif converged with a significant shift in the situation in Gaza when Netanyahu became prime minister for the sixth time after the December 2022 elections. Following a year out of power, Netanyahu formed a coalition between his Likud party and the Religious Zionism Coalition.
The deal with Netanyahu allowed Ben Gvir to become national security minister, while Smotrich was made both finance minister and a minister in Israel’s Defense Ministry, responsible for civil administration in the occupied West Bank.
Under their direction, the occupation state quickly stepped-up military raids against Palestinian resistance groups, accelerated Jewish settlement building, and issued calls for annexing the West Bank.
As violence intensified in March 2023, the Likud-Religious Zionism coalition quietly reversed a crucial aspect of the 2005 Gaza Disengagement. Sharon’s original withdrawal plan involved abandoning four small settlements in the northern West Bank due to security challenges.
However, the Knesset passed an amendment to the disengagement legislation on 21 March, which enabled Jewish settlers to return to these evacuated settlements and paved the way for their reconstruction.
Following the vote, MK Limor Son Har-Melech of the Jewish Power party stated: “We must not rest on our laurels or the euphoria of the moment.” We must also galvanize to “return home to the region of Gush Katif, which was abandoned [in 2005] in an act of terrible folly.”
Minister of National Missions Orit Strock of the Religious Zionism party made a similar call, telling Israel’s Channel 7:
“I believe that, at the end of the day, the sin of the disengagement will be reversed.”
She suggested this would require going to war, adding that “Sadly, a return to the Gaza Strip will nvolve many casualties.” In response, the left-wing Peace Now NGO warned that:
“A messianic revolution is taking place. This government will inevitably destroy our country. They will also deepen the occupation, ignite the region, and establish a Jewish supremacist regime from the river to the sea.”
The Gazan Nakba
In the aftermath of the Palestinian resistance operation of Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October, a slew of propaganda and fake news created the public outrage needed to justify using overwhelming violence against not only Hamas, but all Gazans, and to implement plans to return to Gush Katif.
Public calls to commit genocide against Gazans became widespread among Israeli politicians, journalists and celebrities.
Israel seized the opportunity and initiated a massive bombing campaign on Gaza, accompanied by demands that Palestinians evacuate the northern half of the besieged enclave, a region home to 1.1 million people — about half of the territory’s population — within 24 hours.
Ex-Israeli Deputy Foreign minister and senior diplomat Danny Ayalon wrote on social media that Gazans must not only go to southern Gaza, but flee to Egypt:
“We don’t tell Gazans to go to the beaches or drown themselves … No God forbid … Go to the Sinai Desert … the international community will build them cities and give them food … Egypt ought to play ball with it.”
Israeli demands that Palestinians flee to Egypt were accompanied by the release on 13 October of a report from Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence, led by Likud MK Gamliel.
Clearly prepared before the events of 7 October, the report recommended the occupation of Gaza and total transfer of its 2.3 million inhabitants to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, while insisting they never be allowed to return.
Further, the plan stated the government should launch a public relations campaign directed toward the west that will promote the ethnic cleansing in a way that does not foster international hostility to Israel or damage its already tarnished reputation.
The mass deportation of the population from Gaza must be presented as a necessary humanitarian measure to receive international support, the report stated. Such a deportation could be justified if it will lead to “fewer casualties among the civilian population compared to the expected number of casualties if they remain.”
Israel’s horrific bombing campaign continued, ensuring that the number of casualties would indeed be massive.
On 27 October, after 7,028 Palestinians – including 2,913 children – had been killed, Israel launched its long-anticipated ground invasion of Gaza.
A week later, the rabbi of an Israeli army unit gave a rousing speech to the troops declaring:
“This land is ours … the entire land, including Gaza, including Lebanon, including all of the promised land! … Gush Katif is tiny compared to what we will achieve with God’s help!”
As outlined in the 2018 plan by the military leadership, invading Israeli troops quickly cut the Gaza strip in two, while also invading from the north along the coast.
After planting an Israeli flag in the sand on Gaza’s beach, one Israeli commander told his troops: “We returned, we were expelled from here almost 20 years ago … This is our land! And that is the victory, to return to our lands.”
As Israeli soldiers were celebrating in Gaza, MKs from the Likud party submitted a bill on 8 November to again amend the 2005 Disengagement Law – this time to “repeal the law that bars Jews from entering the Gaza Strip.”
Three days later, Danny Danon, Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, and Ram Ben Barak, a former deputy director of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, published an article in the Wall Street Journal advocating the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, while feigning humanitarian motivations, as outlined in the ministry of intelligence plan.
Sensing that his dream of ethnically cleansing Gaza and rebuilding Gush Katif on the corpses of dead Palestinian children was about to be realized, Bezalel Smotrich welcomed the proposal, stating that “this is the humanitarian solution.”
Former Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked also welcomed the move, but was less diplomatic, exclaiming on Israeli TV:
“After we turn Khan Yunis into a soccer field … we need to take advantage of the destruction [to tell] the countries that each of them should take a quota, it can be 20,000 or 50,000 … We need 2 million to leave. That’s the solution for Gaza.”
Faced with the monumental task of resistance against US-backed occupation forces, the onus is on Hamas and the other Palestinian resistance factions to thwart any progress made on Israel’s “messianic revolution” in Gaza.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Coming back to his house on October 7, world-renowned activist Issa Amro was dragged away by 15 armed Israelis, blindfolded, gagged, and cuffed so tightly he now needs an operation on his hands.
The settlers and soldiers kept him imprisoned for days, beating and torturing him, constantly simulating his execution.
Speaking with MintPress News, Amro told the story of what life is like for Palestinians living in the West Bank city of Hebron. “In my city where I live now, since October 7, there is a curfew,” he told Mnar Adley and Alan MacLeod.
But this curfew is far more restrictive than others. Palestinian families – those who have not already fled the genocidal Israeli violence – are given only six hours a week to leave their homes. They are not even allowed out into their own yards. This means that school has stopped, work has ended, and life is on pause.
In those six hours, Palestinian families must buy all their food, pick up essentials such as medicine and conduct any social activities. But being outside is dangerous, as they have to pass though multiple checkpoints with armed guards and AI smart shooters pointing guns at them. Violence from vigilante settler groups is also a danger.
“It’s scary to walk alone between armed soldiers and armed settlers, all of them pointing their guns at you. Then, when you come back, it takes them five to ten minutes to search every person,” Amro said, revealing that the guards wanted to go so far as to cut open his potatoes and tomatoes to check for “weapons.”
“It’s a kind of jail” right now, Amro said, although he notes that being in jail is considerably safer than being a Palestinian in Hebron right now.
Issa Amro is an activist and the co-founder of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. He has led campaigns of non-violent civil disobedience against apartheid and Israeli occupation and has been recognized and given awards by international organizations, including the United Nations. He joins MintPress to chronicle recent Israeli attempts to force Palestinians from their homes and their ancestral land.
While leaving the house is extremely dangerous, staying inside is barely safer. Amro and others have experienced Israeli raids where troops tell Palestinians that they have 24 hours to leave or they will be murdered.
“History is repeating itself,” Amro told Adley and MacLeod today, “Now I understand why my people left in 1948,” referencing the Israeli genocide of three-quarters of a million Palestinians from their land in order to create the state of Israel.
It is no exaggeration to call the current Israeli actions genocidal. Indeed, senior Israeli politicians are directly comparing it to the events of 1948. Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, for example, described his country’s actions as the “Gaza Nakba 2023.” “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” he told local outlet Channel 12 on Saturday. “From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war – as the Israeli army seeks to do in Gaza – with masses between the tanks and the soldiers,” he added.
In this conversation, Amro provides a crucial first-hand perspective rarely heard in corporate media. Watch the full interview only at MintPress News.
Since Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza began, Zionist officials, pundits, journalists, and their Western opposite numbers have endlessly invoked the sinister specter of “terrorism” to justify the industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians. It is because of “terrorism,” twice-failed U.S. Presidential candidate and unconvicted war criminal Hillary Clinton representatively wrote for The Atlantic on November 14 that “Hamas must be permanently erased.” Destroyed hospitals and schools and civilians killed en masse are reasonable “collateral damage.” Such is the unparalleled evil of “terrorists.”
Yet, the relentless stream of heart-rending clips documenting the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) Holocaust deluging social media feeds the world over, and the ever-ratcheting child death toll has compelled countless citizens to ask, “If Hamas are terrorists, then what are Zionists?” It is surely no coincidence YouTube recently yanked the official video of a groundbreaking track by renowned rapper and MintPress News contributor Lowkey, “Terrorist?” posing this precise question.
“Terrorist?” was released in 2011, at the height of the U.S. Empire’s “War on Terror.” Then, the purported global threat of “terrorism” was exploited throughout the West to savage civil liberties at home and wage relentless illegal military “interventions” abroad. Mainstream usage of the term precipitously plummeted thereafter. It is only now regaining popular currency due to the Gaza genocide.
This is no accident. As we shall see, Israel – and specifically its veteran leader, Benjamin Netanyahu – was fundamental to concocting the mainstream conception of “terrorism,” explicitly to delegitimize anti-imperial struggles while validating Western state violence directed at oppressed peoples across the Global South. The impact of this informational assault can be felt in every corner of the world today – not least Gaza.
In fact, one might reasonably conclude the specific foundations of Nakba 2.0, which is unfolding in grisly real-time right now, were laid decades ago as a result of the connivances of Netanyahu, the international Zionist lobby, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. What follows is the little-known history of how “terrorism” came to be. A majority of the world’s population – the Palestinian people in particular – live with the mephitic consequences every day.
IT BEGINS…
Our story starts in 1976, at the peak of détente between the U.S. and Soviet Union. After two-and-a-half decades of bitter enmity, the two superpowers resolved to peaceful coexistence at the start of the decade. They collaborated to systematically dismantle the structures and doctrines that defined the immediate post-World War II era, such as Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.).
In May of that year, the CIA produced its annual National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a comprehensive report combining data from various intelligence agencies intended to be a basis for crafting foreign policy. In keeping with the past five years, it concluded the Soviets were in severe economic decline, favored diplomacy over conflict, and desperately sought an end to the Cold War. Such findings lay behind Washington’s push for détente and Moscow’s eager acceptance of major disarmament and arms control treaties.
However, newly-appointed CIA director George H. W. Bush categorically rejected these conclusions. He sought a second opinion and constructed an independent intelligence cell to review the NIE. Known as Team B, it was composed of hardcore Cold Warriors, defense-industry-funded hawks, and rabid anti-Communists. Among them were several individuals who would become leading figures in the neoconservative movement, such as Paul Wolfowitz. Also present were the infamous CIA and Pentagon dark arts specialists who had been professionally ostracized due to détente.
Team B duly reviewed the NIE and rubbished each and every one of the Agency’s findings. Rather than dilapidated, impoverished and teetering on total collapse, the Soviet Union was, in fact, more deadly and dangerous than ever, having constructed a vast array of “first strike” capabilities right under the CIA’s collective nose. To reach these bombshell conclusions, Team B relied on a confounding hodgepodge of peculiar logical fallacy, paranoid theorizing, crazed conspiratorial conjecture, unsupported value judgments, and amateurish circular reasoning.
Then-CIA director George H.W. Bush looks over a map of Beirut, Lebanon, with President Gerald Ford. Photo | CIA Archives
For example, Team B repeatedly assessed that a lack of evidence Moscow possessed weapons systems, military technology, or surveillance capabilities comparable or superior to Washington’s own was inverse proof the Soviets, in fact, did. They were so sophisticated and innovative, Team B concluded, that they couldn’t be detected or even comprehended by the West. Team B’s analysis was confirmed to be a total fantasy when the USSR collapsed. Yet, its methods informed all subsequent NIEs throughout the Cold War and likely endure today.
On June 27 of that year, mere weeks after Team B was set to work on reigniting the Cold War, Air France Flight 139, en route to Paris from Tel Aviv, was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Redirected to a Ugandan airport, the plane was greeted on the runway by Idi Amin’s military, who ushered the passengers – the majority of whom were Jewish or Israeli – into the terminal, watched over by scores of soldiers, intended to prevent their escape or rescue.
The hijackers relayed a demand to the government of Israel. Unless a ransom of $5 million was paid to them and 53 Palestinian prisoners were released from jail, the hostages would be executed. In response, 100 elite IOF commandos launched an audacious action to free the hostages. Their mission – known as the Entebbe Raid – was a stunning success. All but four hostages were rescued alive, and the IOF lost just one commander – Yonatan (Jonathan) Netanyahu, the older brother of Israel’s sitting Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
‘PROPAGANDA TO DEHUMANIZE’
For years, by that point, Israeli officials had been attempting to popularize the term “terrorism” to explain the motivations and actions of Palestinian freedom fighters. That way, their righteous fury at repression could be reframed as a destructive ideology of violence for violence’s sake without rationale and Zionist colonial tyranny as warranted self-defense. This effort became turbocharged in September 1972, when the kidnapping of 11 Israeli athletes at that year’s Olympics in Munich by Palestinian militants ended with all hostages murdered.
This particularly public bloodshed centered world attention on Israel and left Western citizens wondering what could’ve possibly inspired such actions. Zionists had hitherto managed to largely conceal their systematic, state-enforced repression and displacement of Palestinians from the outside world. Journalists were kept well away from the scenes of major crimes. At the same time, Amnesty International’s Israeli branch was secretly financed and directed by Tel Aviv’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to whitewash facts on the ground.
For the Netanyahu family, the Entebbe raid was a tragedy – but also an ideal opportunity to validate and internationalize the concept of “terrorism,” as espoused by Zionists. In 1979, Benjamin Netanyahu founded the Jonathan Institute in honor of his slain brother. Its purpose, he said, was:
“To focus public attention on the grave threat that international terrorism poses to all democratic societies, to study the real nature of today’s terrorism, and to propose measures for combating and defeating the international terror movements.”
In 1983 Netanyahu explained what terrorism is not
If you miss a target and a bomb accidentally falls on a Children's hospital it's not terrorism Does it hold true in 2023!!! pic.twitter.com/6DiHRv0IKk
In July that year, the Institute convened the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism (JCIT) in Jerusalem’s Hilton Hotel. It gathered together a 700-strong mob of Israeli government officials, U.S. lawmakers, intelligence operatives from across the ‘Five Eyes’ global spying network, and Western foreign policy apparatchiks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many representatives of Team B were in attendance. For four days and seven separate sessions, speaker after speaker painted a disturbing picture of the worldwide phenomenon of “terrorism.”
They unanimously declared that all “terrorists” constituted a single, organized political movement that was being secretly financed, armed, trained, and directed by the Soviet Union. This devilish nexus, it was claimed, posed a mortal threat to Western democracy, freedom, and security, requiring a coordinated response. Eerily, as academic Diana Ralph later observed, the JCIT’s collective prescription for tackling this purported menace was precisely what transpired just over two decades later during the “War on Terror”.
“[This included] pre-emptive attacks on states that are alleged to support ‘terrorists’; an elaborate intelligence system apparatus; slashed civil liberties, particularly for Palestinians targeted as potential terrorists, including detention without charge, and torture; and propaganda to dehumanize ‘terrorists’ in the eyes of the public.”
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin addressed the JCIT’s opening session. He set the tone by claiming Western state violence was ultimately “a fight for freedom or liberation” and, therefore, fundamentally opposed to “terrorism.” He concluded his remarks by imploring the assembled throng to go forth and promote the conference’s message once it was over. And they did.
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin addressed the JCIT’s opening session. He set the tone by claiming Western state violence was ultimately “a fight for freedom or liberation” and, therefore, fundamentally opposed to “terrorism.” He concluded his remarks by imploring the assembled throng to go forth and promote the conference’s message once it was over. And they did.
‘THE TERROR NETWORK’
Among the JCIT attendees was American author and journalist Claire Sterling, who cut her teeth as a reporter decades earlier at the Overseas News Agency, an MI6 propaganda operation seeking to boost U.S. public support for entering World War II. Following the conference, she frequently amplified the claims of JCIT speakers in articles for prominent newspapers, leading to an epic March 1981 front-page exposé in The New York Times, “Terrorism: Tracing The International Network.”
A book published later that year, “The Terror Network,” expanded significantly on Sterling’s oeuvre and firmly cemented the notion of Moscow as a grand spider sat in the middle of a vast, globe-spanning web of deadly political violence in the Western public mind. It caused a sensation upon release, receiving rave reviews from major news outlets, being translated into 22 languages, and becoming a bestseller in several countries.
Most significantly of all, “The Terror Network” had a particularly potent impact on newly-inaugurated President Ronald Reagan and his CIA chief William Casey. Committed anti-Communists, they entered office desperately seeking a pretext for brutally crushing left-wing, nationalist opposition to U.S. imperialism in Latin America. Sterling’s work provided ample ammunition for achieving that bloodsoaked objective and was key to the White House decisively shattering détente, a process begun by Team B five years earlier.
Consequently, “The Terror Network” was circulated among U.S. lawmakers and heavily promoted overseas on the Reagan administration’s dime. Casey furthermore tasked his Agency with verifying its thesis. They quickly assessed Sterling’s work to be irredeemable garbage, ironically enough, as it was heavily influenced by CIA black propaganda. Enraged, Casey demanded the evaluation be revised. An updated appraisal was less scathing but nonetheless stressed the book was “uneven and the reliability of its sources varies widely,” while “significant portions” were “incorrect.”
Still dissatisfied, Casey asked a CIA “senior review panel” charged with scrutinizing Langley’s formal estimates to write their own report on the subject. They concluded the Soviets did offer limited financial, material and practical assistance to a handful of anti-imperial Global South liberation movements, some of which were labeled “terrorists” by Western powers. But there was “insufficient evidence” of Muscovite culpability for the entire global phenomenon of “terrorism,” let alone funding and directing such entities as dedicated policy.
Undeterred, when Casey personally delivered the report to Reagan, he allegedly said of its findings, “Of course, Mr. President, you and I know better.” So it was CIA-backed death squads that ran roughshod across Washington’s “backyard” throughout the 1980s in the name of neutralizing Soviet influence in the region. Their actions were heavily informed by the Agency’s guerrilla warfare manual, which encouraged assassinations of government officials and civilian leaders and deadly attacks on “soft targets” such as schools and hospitals. “Terrorism,” in other words.
‘WE ARE ALL PALESTINIANS’
Another example of Reagan’s “terrorism” was sponsoring Afghanistan’s Mujahideen resistance fighters in their battle with – ironically enough – the Soviet Red Army. This policy endured after the “Evil Empire” was vanquished. The same militants were transported to Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s to aid and abet the painful, forced death of Yugoslavia.
When these covert actions produced “blowback” in the form of the 9/11 attacks, several individuals who attended the JCIT, and their acolytes, were elevated to the Bush administration due to their supposed “terrorism” expertise. Meanwhile, with public and state-level fears of “terrorism” ramping up significantly the world over, many Western countries turned to Israel for advice and guidance on how to tackle the issue. As Nentyahu commented in 2008:
“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon and the American struggle in Iraq.”
Netanyahu shows reporters a copy of a Syrian passport allegedly found on a Palestinian fighter that washed ashore in Gaza, 1991. Jerome Delay | AP
It is not for nothing that graphic videos showcasing IOF “surgical strikes” on Palestinians, their homes, schools, and hospitals are proudly displayed at international arms fairs, and private demonstrations of invasive surveillance tools such as Pegasus routinely wow repressive foreign security and intelligence agencies behind-closed-doors.
On top of a significant financial benefit, there is a diplomatic dividend, too. Israel secures an invaluable censure-stifling goodwill from customers, therefore permitting the Zionist project of permanently purging Palestine of its indigenous inhabitants to persist untrammeled. We see a palpable demonstration of this currently. While the streets of almost every major Western city have regularly teemed with pro-Palestine fervor ever since the latest attack on Gaza began, the protesters’ elected representatives are at best silent, at worst, actively complicit.
Impassioned chants of “We are all Palestinians!” have been a frequent fixture at these events. This rallying call is highly apposite, for in addition to expressing sympathy and solidarity with the Palestinian people, it is urgently incumbent upon us all to reflect that the very same techniques and technologies of control and oppression to which they have been so cruelly subjected daily for decades are now firmly trained on us as well, as a result of Israel’s invention of “terrorism.” As such, it is no exaggeration to say Palestinians are canaries in the coalmine of humanity.
One of the most extraordinary – yet unremarked upon – developments since Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza began has been the British monarchy’s brazen jettisoning of any pretense of “political neutrality.” Queen Elizabeth II, publicly at least, rigidly refrained from commenting on current affairs or giving the vaguest appearance of taking a particular “side” on any issue throughout her 70-year reign. However, her recently coronated heir has comprehensively consigned that convention to ashes.
Within hours of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood commencing, King Charles viciously condemned Hamas, saying that he was “profoundly distressed” and “appalled” by the “horrors inflicted” by the group and its “barbaric acts of terrorism.” Hamas is not recognized as a terrorist entity by the majority of countries, and even the BBC – which has relentlessly manufactured consent for genocide in Gaza since the violence erupted – rejects the use of that loaded, politicized designation.
During his lengthy spell as Prince of Wales, Charles was an inveterate meddler in the British government’s domestic and foreign policy in ways that were often far from discrete. Yet, he has remained largely silent since quietly becoming King in September 2022, then being formally crowned in May this year. His public statements are, therefore, highly significant and, what’s more, seemingly represent just the tip of a much larger intervention.
The Daily Telegraph has reported that behind the scenes, King Charles is “pushing for peace in the Middle East” using “soft power.” If so, these efforts have so far failed miserably. Israel’s murderous rampage in Gaza has only ratcheted in brutality since it commenced, the death toll rising by hundreds daily as civilian infrastructure is flattened by an inexorable aerial onslaught. Meanwhile, the threat of a full-blown ground invasion ever looms.
As such, it is only reasonable to ask whether Charles’ vision of “peace” in Gaza is, in fact, Palestine completely purged of Palestinians and if he has in any way encouraged the occupation government of Benjamin Netanyahu in its new attempt to recreate the Nakba. As we shall see, the King fully supports Zionism and the ideology’s genocidal objectives, and Britain’s military, intelligence agencies, and government dependably act upon his orders and according to his wishes.
A PROBLEM FOR PALESTINIANS’
Queen Elizabeth II never visited Israel. It was widely speculated that she was advised against doing so by the Foreign Office for fear of Arab boycotts of British goods and oil embargoes, which had crippled the country’s economy in late 1973. Yet, it has been suggested in some quarters that she privately harbored sympathy for the Palestinians and abhorred Zionist violence toward Arabs.
Come January 2020, with her health rapidly declining, Charles took on her official foreign visit responsibilities as de facto British head of state, and among his first ports of call was Israel. It wasn’t the first time he’d traveled to the country. Previously, he privately attended the funerals of former Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. His presence on both occasions was a closely guarded secret.
While on the trip, Charles declared it was his “dearest wish that the future will bring freedom, justice and equality to all Palestinians.” Yet, the details of his prior visits suggest this statement was not sincere. In 2016, while attending the funeral of Peres, he also visited the graves of his grandmother, Princess Alice, and her aunt, Grand Duchess Elisabeth, in a small Christian cemetery on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives, near the world’s largest Jewish cemetery.
Both were Christian Zionists, and their desire to be buried on the Mount reflects its significance to the movement. Despite lying in a part of the city claimed by Arabs as East Jerusalem, which is recognized by several countries as Palestine’s capital, it is considered to be among the holiest Jewish sites in the world and cited by Zionists as key proof that the territory comprising Israel as described in the Bible is the exclusive homeland of Jews.
The Jerusalem Post approvingly dubbed Charles’ Christian Zionist sympathies and familial connection to the Mount “a problem for Palestinians,” arguing the King has a clear conception of “who the city and the country belong to” as a result. Meanwhile, the Times of Israel has hailed him as “a friend” to Jewry “with special and historic ties to Israel.”
One such tie was a long-running and extremely close friendship with Britain’s former chief Rabbi and President of United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA), Jonathan Sacks. Upon his death in November 2020, Charles praised him as “a leader whose wisdom, scholarship and humanity were without equal”:
“It was with the most profound personal sorrow that I heard of the death of Rabbi Lord Sacks. With his passing, the Jewish community, our nation, and the entire world have lost a leader whose wisdom, scholarship and humanity were without equal.”
Then-Prince Charles speaks to guests during a tribute dinner to Lord Sacks, June 24, 2013. Lewis Whyld | PA Wire
UJIA is one of Israel’s three national institutions and operates a number of programs to train Jews the world over to advance Zionist interests, starting in primary schools. Sacks was a fervent advocate of a similar Israeli government effort, known as Birthright, under which anyone anywhere in the world aged 18-26 who can prove Jewish heritage is given an all-expenses paid trip to Israel to rub shoulders with Occupation Forces be deluged with Zionist propaganda, and foster a personal connection with the country.
While highly controversial, Sacks considered Birthright “perhaps, the greatest single innovation in Jewish life in the past quarter century” for “strengthening [attendees’] links to the land, the State and the people of Israel.” His attempts to indoctrinate children in Zionism extended to serving on the board of One Voice, an astroturf anti-BDS lobbying group targeting schools.
With friends like Sacks, King Charles undoubtedly feels very strongly about who Jerusalem belongs to.
‘OBEDIENT SERVANT’
It is an open question whether the monarch’s affinity for Israel in any way accounts for the British government’s abandonment of its historical sympathy for the Arab world and modern-day accommodation with Zionism. A lie universally maintained by the mainstream media is the British monarchy’s powers in the 21st century are purely ceremonial. While the obsequious terminology “His/Her Majesty’s government” may be liberally used still, long gone are the days, it is alleged, when a King or Queen could overrule parliament’s will.
In reality, a little-known procedure known as “Queen’s Consent” means a King or Queen’s acquiescence to prospective laws must be sought by the British government before they can even be put to parliamentary vote. Moreover, under this convention, monarchs are alerted whenever legislation that could affect the royal prerogative or the British Crown’s private interests is in the offing. This stipulation not only produces a pronounced chilling effect on all laws and regulations elected governments draw up but frequently alters their composition in ways large and small.
For example, in February 2021, it was revealed that in the 1970s, Queen Elizabeth II pressured government ministers to amend transparency legislation to conceal her “embarrassing” wealth from the public. As a result, a clause was inserted granting companies used by “heads of state” exemptions from financial disclosures. The true scale of her riches remains unknown, although it has been estimated to run into hundreds of millions of pounds.
“Queen’s Consent” is not the only mechanism of political control in a British royal’s arsenal. In May 2015, over two dozen private communications between then-Prince Charles and British ministers were published after a decade-long legal struggle. Successive governments squandered hundreds of thousands of pounds to keep these letters private. The contents showed that Charles, in flagrant breach of “political neutrality,” had routinely petitioned elected representatives on subjects ranging from the Iraq War to alternative medicines over many years.
In one message, the then-heir to the British throne openly warned a health minister that “chickens will come home to roost” in their department if redevelopment of a hospital – in which the Prince’s architecture charity had an interest – was not accelerated. However, Charles didn’t typically rely on threats. Government officials were usually willing to obsequiously roll over whenever – and however – he ordered them to.
Then-Prince Charles visits the Metropolitan Police Central Communications Command during the 2011 London riots | Express Newspapers Via AP
In response to one covert royal intervention, Prime Minister Tony Blair unctuously stated to Charles, “I always value and look forward to your views.” In another, an education secretary sycophantically signed off: “I have the honor to be Your Royal Highness’ most humble and obedient servant.”
The release of these letters prompted speculation Charles would be far more outspoken and overtly meddlesome than his ostensibly taciturn mother upon taking the throne. Until Hamas struck Israel, these tendencies had not hitherto publicly emerged. However, it is somewhat inconceivable that since his coronation, he has not interfered in British politics in some way or other. We have no way of knowing, though, as in 2010, Britain’s Freedom of Information Act was amended to provide an “absolute exemption” on all requests related to the royal family.
The connivances of British royalty are also protected by law throughout the Commonwealth. In 2020, after a four-year-long legal battle, the Australian government released correspondence exposing how Queen Elizabeth II was instrumental in the ouster of Canberra’s radical left-wing premier, Gough Whitlam, in November 1975. The papers showed that then-Prince Charles was a core conspirator in the coup, coordinating directly with Britain’s governor John Kerr – who dismissed the Prime Minister – before, during and after. Six months later, the King-in-waiting wrote to Kerr:
“I wanted you to know that I appreciate what you do and admire enormously the way you have performed in your many and varied duties. Please don’t lose heart. What you did last year was right and the courageous thing to do.”
ALL THE KING’S GROOMERS
In October 2021, historians Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac published The Secret Royals, a landmark text tracking the House of Windsor’s relationship with British intelligence over centuries. Completing the work was no easy feat. In its preface, the authors remark, “Writing about spies is challenging; writing about royals is more difficult; and writing about spies and royals has sometimes seemed impossible.”
Nonetheless, the pair pieced together a tantalizing history of the British monarchy’s enduring, intimate adjacency to intelligence. They recorded how Queen Elizabeth I’s reign inaugurated a golden age of spying in Europe as the British Empire came into being while tracing the birth of London’s modern-day espionage agencies to efforts to prevent Queen Victoria’s assassination. Much of the book’s content was hitherto secret.
One can only speculate what future scholars might unearth on King Charles’ bond with MI5, MI6, et al. Nonetheless, what is in the public domain is highly disquieting. As Prince of Wales, the monarch was a formal patron to British intelligence, his personal Charitable Fund routinely funneling vast sums to notorious signals spying agency GCHQ.
In January, King Charles visited GCHQ’s secret Manchester headquarters. There, he “met with teams from across the organization,” including its director and young graduates of the agency’s apprenticeship scheme. In addition to receiving “several” in-person briefings from high-ranking spies, he intruded upon a local primary school class present at the site that day, taking part in a “special lesson.” Unsettling publicity photos depict him beaming broadly while hovering closely over the shoulders of very young children.
During his visit, His Majesty took part in a special puzzling session with pupils from @CoopNwIslington and met with graduates from our apprentice scheme. @RoyalFamily
For years, GCHQ – Britain’s largest and best-funded spying agency – has run dedicated programs to infiltrate schools, propagandize and groom British youth to become future patriotic cyber warriors, and identify and monitor potential troublemakers in classrooms. The January visit was not the first time King Charles featured centrally in these activities. He was guest of honor at GCHQ’s 100th birthday in 2019, along with many primary school children. A contemporary agency newsletter boastfully reported:
“The Prince showed great interest in the project’s goals and spent time chatting with the students that the schools had selected to represent them, in addition to the teachers. After meeting the teachers and students, the Prince went on a tour of some of the more secretive work of NCSC [National Cyber Security Centre] and GCHQ.”
Charles’ very public association with GCHQ’s child grooming efforts tends to suggest this sinister work is conducted at His Majesty’s request, or at least with the King’s explicit blessing. To effectively guide and influence British government policy and action, by definition, requires a perpetual unblinking eye trained on both public and behind-closed-doors developments the world over. The monarch, by definition, has every interest in ensuring future generations of spies are up to the task.
A palpable example of the amazing foresight of British spooks was provided on October 8, 2023, when veteran reporter Robert Peston published a remarkable post on X (formerly Twitter). He had been told by “government and intelligence sources” that Hamas’ strike on Israel would likely evolve into full-blown war in West Asia, “as destabilizing to global security as Putin’s attack on Ukraine.”
Peston’s shadowy sources further warned U.S. President Joe Biden “would neither want [nor] be able to veto” a major retaliation from Netanyahu not merely against Palestinians but also Iran, which they accused of sponsoring Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. The journalist duly prophesized:
“There is a risk of this crisis spreading well beyond the Middle East because of Putin’s links with Iran, the West’s deep concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and China’s power struggle with America. We are in the early stages of a conflict with ramifications for much of the world.”
For Peston, a thoroughly well-connected establishment hack of some standing to relay these words was highly significant. The timing of this intervention, just one day after Hamas spectacularly swooped upon Israel’s Occupation Forces, likewise. British spies were from the word go somehow certain Operation Al-Aqsa Flood would inevitably lead to something much grander and graver, and felt it incumbent to begin immediately laying public foundations for that imminently impending eventuality.
Five days later, the Royal Navy and British elite special forces units were dispatched to the Mediterranean to “support” Tel Aviv and closely surveil local developments.
While Israel’s long-threatened Gaza ground offensive remains abortive as of October 29, the devastatingly lethal air assault on Palestinians waged ever since, along with multiple airstrikes on Lebanon and Syria, mean that the stage is decisively set for a “conflict with ramifications for much of the world.” Just as Peston’s sources cautioned.
At many of the countless demonstrations the world over in support of the Palestinians, demonstrators have brandished aloft signs imploring the U.S. President to impose a ceasefire in Gaza, if not order Netanyahu to seek enduring peace. Such requests may be misdirected. The true power to halt Israel’s latest push to fulfill Zionism’s genocidal founding mission may not lie in Washington DC but in London. Specifically, Buckingham Palace.
As tensions among the Israeli political parties escalate, the disintegrated initiatives of the Zionist settlers who attacked the Palestinian town of Huwara indicate that the decision-making in the occupation entity has left the zone of alleged rationalization as decided by Tel Aviv officials.
The irrational tendency of the Zionists is expected to lead them to retrieve their primitive policies which served the establishment of the usurping entity at the expense of the Palestinian and Arab blood as well as rights.
Haganah was the militia primarily responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages during the Nakba in 1947-49. Huge number of Palestinians were killed in the context of horrible massacres that occurred in numerous villages and towns, including Deir Yassin.
Ruins of homes left empty from the deir yassin massacre, 1986. (Photo: deiryassinremembered.org)
The main Zionist target of the massacres was dispossessing the Palestinians of their land, property and identity. This aim was reiterated by the Zionist settlers who attacked Huwara town on Sunday, February 26.
Moreover, the methods and tools used in order to reach this target have been also similar as they include murdering, burning and expelling locals and real owners.
The following video shows the terrorist attack of the Zionist settlers on Huwara town. The video, posted by Euronews, displays how the Zionists burnt the Palestinians’ properties and the aftermath of the attack.
The following videograph exposes the horrible extent of the Israeli attack on Huwara:
The judicial reforms are expected to turn the ruling system in the Zionist entity into dictatorship, according to Zionist reports. This would reinforce the Israeli tendency to commit more massacres against the Palestinians to the extent of causing a new Nakba as some settlers told reporters.
However, the Palestinian resistance will not allow the Zionists to torture the Palestinians again. Its missiles are ready to be fired from Gaza, and youths are available to stab the settlers across the occupied territories. Thus, the Israeli schemes are doomed to failure, and the occupation entity is certainly heading into demise.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 