progressiveissuesblog

Israel Prisoner Releases

Updated 2024-07-25

2024-07-15 Freed by Hamas from Israel’s jails – The Grayzone reports   ournalist Jeremy Loffredo travels to the Dheishe Refugee Camp in the occupied Palestinian West Bank to meet Rawda Abu Ajamieh, a woman who was jailed for her activism, and released in exchange for Israeli captives as part of the December 2023 prisoner swap between Hamas and Israel. Ajamieh describes the harrowing conditions prisoners experienced after October 7, when their Israeli jailers embarked on a revenge spree of beatings and sadistic punishments, and the jubilation of experiencing freedom.

Loffredo also speaks to Tala Nasser of the Addameer Prisoner Support NGO, which has been blacklisted by the Israeli government as a “terrorist organization.” Nasser details testimony collected by Addameer of horrific abuses, including sexual assault, by Israeli prison authorities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZu18Vvwy2g

2023-11-27 Updates from Electronic Intifada   33 Palestinians – 30 children and three women – were released by the Israel Prison Service and an additional 200 trucks have delivered aid to Gaza, as per the agreement signed between Hamas and Israel. According to Haaretz, “Israel police warned the families of Palestinian prisoners freed from Israeli jails as part of the exchange deal with Hamas not to celebrate the return of their loved ones.” The families of the released Palestinian children were summoned by police to issue the warning, Haaretz added.    https://electronicintifada.net/updates               

2023-11-27 Police warn families of freed Palestinians not to celebrate their release     The Israel police has warned the families of Palestinian prisoners freed from Israeli jails as part of the exchange deal with Hamas not to celebrate the return of their loved ones. Ahead of the release, police summoned the families of prisoners to issue the warning.

In addition, police prevented journalists from approaching the Sheikh Jarrah home of Nafuz Jad Araf Hamad, who is among those Palestinians expected to be released, and is preventing the media from covering her arrival.

[MEK Note: This has been contested by Palestinian Sources] Hamad was jailed after stabbing and seriously wounding an Israeli woman who was walking in the street with her five children in December 2021. Hamad was sentenced to 12 years in prison earlier this month.   https://archive.vn/ZY7IH#selection-467.0-469.68

2023-11-27 CNN Correspondent Reveals Truth About Israel    Treatment of Prisoners being released by Israel involves censorship, threats against celebration and Isolation .    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t3NkiV7JwA

2023-11-27 Israel Releases Palestinian Child Prisoners!     As part of the recent hostage swap with Hamas, Israeli authorities released dozens of prisoners, many of whom are or were children at the time of their arrest. Unbeknownst to most westerners, Israel routinely arrests Palestinian children and then subjects them to solitary confinement, physical and sexual abuse and other deprivations — this according to Save the Children.

Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger, along with Due Dissidence’s Keaton Weiss, discuss Israeli propaganda about its treatment of Palestinians and how long American politicians can continue to spread these lies.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfRVPZ9Cics

2023-11-26    78 children and women prisoners embrace freedom amid extremely difficult detention conditions     Since Friday evening, Israeli occupation authorities have released 78 child prisoners and detainees who have spent varying periods within the occupation’s prisons. This came after a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas in Gaza as part of a truce agreement. It is expected that the occupation authorities will gradually release a total of 150 male and female prisoners from the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem during the days of the truce, in exchange for the release of several Israeli prisoners in Gaza. In the past few days, 30 female prisoners have been released, including four administrative detainees, and 14 prisoners serving varied sentences, the highest is the released prisoner Shorouq Dwayyat, sentenced to 16 years. Among those released were also several injured prisoners, including Israa al-Ja’abees, who suffers severe burns, and Fatima Shaheen, who lost the ability to walk after being shot by the occupation forces.

Regarding children, the occupation authorities released 48 child prisoners in the past two days, among them the injured child prisoner Wisam Tamimi, who had been shot in the head few days before his arrest. The Israeli prison service (IPS) has practiced deliberate medical neglect and assaulted him during detention, and he is still under trial. Additionally, seven children under arbitrary administrative detention were released, and it is also expected to release the child Mohammad Abu Qutaish, who is serving a 15-year sentence, which is the highest sentence among the children, in the coming days.

The Israeli forces deliberately assaulted the prisoners and their families during the prisoner release operations. They delayed the release of prisoners until late at night, and they released the child prisoners wearing clothes that did are too big for their size, and some of them were barefoot. Additionally, the clothes did not provide adequate protection from the cold weather. The forces also used sound bombs, gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition in front of Ofer Prison while families were gathered, awaiting the release of their loved ones.

Moreover, the Israeli forces raided the homes of the prisoners before their release in occupied Jerusalem, preventing them from any signs of celebration upon reuniting with their sons and daughters. The families were summoned to the Mascobiyyeh interrogation center and subjected to arbitrary conditions that prohibited gatherings, banned marches and fireworks, and prevented chanting slogans. The Israeli forces also assaulted journalists who were present at the homes of the detainees in Jerusalem, by physically assaulting and expelling them, prohibiting them from media coverage.      https://addameer.org/news/5232

2023-11-26 Updates from Electronic Intifada   39 Palestinians – women and children – have been released from Israeli prison each of the first three days in accordance with the prisoner exchange agreement. The 117 are mostly children, part of a cohort that totals some 250 children and women imprisoned in Israel, more than 80 percent of whom are being held without formal charges against them, held in what Israel calls administrative detention. There are more than 7,000 political prisoners held in Israeli jails and prisons, according to Addameer, the Palestinian prisoners rights group.  https://electronicintifada.net/updates                 

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Israeli-Palestinian Peace Efforts (see Peaceful Solutions)

Updated 2024-07-25

The Forever War – Documentary    Is there a way out of the Israel-Palestine war?   This war will be etched in the memories of generations to come: the brutality of Hamas’s October 7 attack, and the ferocity of Israel’s retaliation. In this Four Corners, ABC’s Global Affairs Editor John Lyons asks the tough questions; challenging some of Israel’s most powerful political and military voices about the country’s strategy and intentions.   https://www.journeyman.tv/features

Book Recommendations:

The Peace Puzzle (https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/…) by Daniel C. Kurtzer, Scott B. Lasensky, William B. Quandt, Steven L. Spiegel and Shibley Telhami

Arabs and Israelis (https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/arabs-a…) by Abdel Monem Said Aly, Shai Feldman and Khalil Shikaki

The Missing Peace (https://us.macmillan.com/books/978037…) by Dennis Ross

2023-11-21 The Best Primer I’ve Heard on Israeli-Palestinian Peace Efforts      t is too early to talk about a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. With the trauma of Oct. 7 still fresh for the Israeli public and with the ongoing devastation in Gaza, any talk of conflict-ending solutions is cruel fantasy.   But it wasn’t always. Peace efforts in the Middle East have been tried over and over again. It is not a history without breakthroughs. There was a time when a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt would have been unthinkable. But that agreement lives alongside a long list of collapsed negotiations. Why?

I wanted to have someone on the show who could help me read this checkered history. Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo… Few people have been as intimately involved in the many Middle East peace processes as Miller. He’s a decades-long veteran of the State Department who has touched peace negotiations under the Reagan, the Clinton and both Bush administrations. His book is the best I’ve read on the peace processes and what went wrong.

In this conversation, we explore the frustrating, uneven history of Arab-Israeli peace efforts, Miller’s hard-won insights about the reality of peace negotiations and the idiosyncratic personalities who have most influenced the prospects for peace in the Middle East. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8eeZO_x6PI

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Israel Assassination Program (see Assassination Factory)

Updated 2024-08-26

2024-08-01 Netanyhu Assassination Spree Could Set Middle East on Fire   Netanyahu’s lifelong belief that he will lead his nation to victory by crushing the Palestinian national cause and preventing a state from ever seeing the light of day can never be discounted.   Today, he might think he is on the cusp of his ultimate political achievement as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, by dragging the U.S. and Britain into war with Iran.

Netanyahu sent other messages, too, in killing Haniyeh, who had no involvement in the Hamas attack on 7 October, and whose bureau was in charge of negotiations with mediators Qatar and Egypt.   Netanyahu has torn up negotiations and any thought of getting the hostages back alive. This should already have been obvious from the latest round of talks in Rome, where the Israeli side multiplied its conditions around phase one of the deal.  It was evident, too, from Netanyahu’s last visit to Rafah, where he vowed Israel would retain indefinite control of the Philadelphi corridor.

Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has asked how negotiations can proceed when Israel has killed its negotiating counterpart.  In killing a mild man like Haniyeh, who did not hide underground but lived out in the open, and who dedicated his career to negotiations and engagement with the Islamic world in Qatar, Turkey and Iran, Israel has killed a leader it could one day need to negotiate a hudna, or long-term ceasefire. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/haniyeh-assassination-regional-war

2024-08-00  Analysist Rami Khouri  on Israel killing Machine   https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XMHq6JprrJc

2024-07-31 From Paris to Beirut: Israel’s Long Record of Assassinating Palestinians    Haniyeh’s killing in Tehran also follows a long pattern of assassinations of Palestinian leaders, from Rome to Paris, Beirut to Athens, and from Gaza to Tunis. Israel has rarely claimed responsibility for the killings—though it usually also does not deny its role. And analysts are convinced that these assassinations bear Israel’s stamp, stretching over more than half a century.  Here are other leaders killed over the decades:   https://www.wrmea.org/web-exclusives/from-paris-to-beirut-israels-long-record-of-assassinating-palestinians.html

2024-07-31 Netanyahu’s end game: Why Israel killed Hamas chief in Iran | Gideon Levy | The Big Picture S5E1    Two assassinations. Two capital cities. Less than 24 hours.   One struck an apartment in downtown Beirut, killing a woman and two children – targeting a Hezbollah senior commander.Then just hours later, a strike in the heart of Tehran, assassinating Hamas’ most high profile figure, and its political chief – Ismail Hanieyah.

Israel has claimed the first attack, though not the second – at least not yet – but the reverberations are already starting to be felt – as are fears that we’re barreling towards an inevitable regional war – one that could spiral quickly out of control.

This week on The Big Picture Podcast, we sit down with award-winning Israeli journalist and author Gideon Levy about the significance, and wisdom, of the two high profile assassinations.  

Hanieyah’s killing in particular threatens to derail the already fragile ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, which have so far failed to put an end to a horrific 10-month war that killed more than 39,000 Palestinians and 1200 Israelis.  It also pushes the United States deeper into a corner. The Biden Administration has failed to pull Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the brink, but continues to supply him with weapons used against a civilian population in Gaza, while undermining attempts to hold Israel to account internationally.

Now less than 100 days before an election that could return Trump to the White House – can the US really afford to follow Israel into a war with Hezbollah – and possibly – a war with Iran? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9JB8jMu3lk

2024-02-03 No Palestinians Will Be Killed in Malaysia – Prime Minister    Commenting on Yemen’s Ansarallah Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, Ibrahim added in statements to Al Jazeera that the problem did not begin with the operations launched by the Yemeni group but rather with the Israeli aggression against Gaza.

The Malaysian official affirmed that the security services in his country are at the highest level of caution in anticipation of any assassination operations of Palestinians, emphasizing that his country will not tolerate any attempt to kill Palestinians on its territory.   https://www.palestinechronicle.com/no-palestinians-will-be-killed-in-malaysia-prime-minister/

2023-12-07 ‘Huge Loss’ as Gaza Luminary Refaat Alareer ‘Assassinated’ by Israel      Human rights defenders around the world expressed anguish and outrage Thursday after Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian professor who was one of Gaza’s most prominent writers and activists, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Shejaiya that also killed his brother, sister, and her four children.   Alareer, 44, was “a beloved professor of world literature, comparative literature, Shakespeare, and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he taught since 2007,” noted Literary Hub.

He was the co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced (2015) and the editor of Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (2014). Dr. Alareer was also one of the founders of We Are Not Numbers, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating “a new generation of Palestinian writers and thinkers who can bring together a profound change to the Palestinian cause.”

The Chicago-based website The Electronic Intifadasaid on social media it is “devastated by Israel’s murder of our dear colleague, friend, and mentor.”   “Throughout this genocide, Refaat never stopped writing, supporting his students, and bringing Gaza’s voice to the world,” the site added. “We will make sure it continues to be heard.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/refaat-alareer

2023-12-06 Israel vows to pursue Hamas globally, Turkey reacts  Turkey has warned Israel of “serious consequences” should it attempt to pursue members of Hamas living abroad, including those residing in Turkey, conveyed a representative from Turkish intelligence on Monday.    Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s domestic security agency Shin Bet, previously announced Israel’s commitment to eliminating Hamas globally, even if it requires several years.

“We have been mandated by the government to eliminate Hamas. This is our Munich. We will do it everywhere, in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Turkey, and Qatar. It may take a few years, but we are committed to seeing it through,” Bar emphasized in a recording broadcast on Sunday by Israeli public broadcaster Kan.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-vows-to-pursue-hamas-globally-turkey-reacts/ar-AA1l29hO  

2023-12-01 Israel’s AI-Aided Targeting Creates Massacre ‘Factory’ in Gaza  “This is the first AI-facilitated genocide in history,” said one observer.   As Israel on Friday resumed bombarding Gaza following a weeklong pause, a joint investigation by a pair of progressive Israeli media outlets sheds new light on the Israel Defense Forces’ use of artificial intelligence to select targets, essentially creating what one former Israeli officer called a “mass assassination factory.”

The Israeli sites +972 Magazine and Local Call interviewed seven current and former Israeli intelligence officials including participants in the current war on Gaza, who spoke under condition of anonymity. Their testimonies—as well as official statements by Israeli officials, interviews with Palestinians, documentation from the besieged strip, and data—show how Israeli leaders know roughly how many Palestinian civilians are likely to be killed in each of its attacks, and how the use of AI-based systems is accelerating a noncombatant casualty rate that more resembles the indiscriminate bombing of World War II than the modern era of codified civilian protection under international humanitarian law.

“Nothing happens by accident,” another source stressed. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed—that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target.”https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-civilian-casualties-2666414736

2023-12-01 “Mass Assassination Factory”: Israel Using AI to Generate Targets in Gaza, Increasing Civilian Toll     We look at a new report that reveals how Israel is using artificial intelligence to draw up targets in its military assault of Gaza. The report’s author, journalist Yuval Abraham, has found that the IDF’s increasing use of AI is partly a response to previous operations in Gaza when Israel quickly ran out of military targets, causing it to loosen its constraints on attacks that could kill civilians. In other words, the “civilian devastation that is happening right now in Gaza” is the result of a “war policy that has a very loose interpretation of what a military target is.” This targeting of private homes and residences to kill alleged combatants means that “when a child is killed in Gaza, it’s because somebody made a decision it was worth it.” It has turned the Israeli military into a “mass assassination factory,” with a “total disregard for Palestinian civil life,” continues Abraham, who also notes that, as an Israeli journalist, his reporting is still subject to military censors. We also discuss another recent report revealing that Israel may have received intelligence about Hamas’s planned attack more than a year in advance of October 7, but ignored it. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/1/israel_gaza_war_gospel_artificial_intelligence

2023-11-30 ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza     The Israeli army’s expanded authorization for bombing non-military targets, the loosening of constraints regarding expected civilian casualties, and the use of an artificial intelligence system to generate more potential targets than ever before, appear to have contributed to the destructive nature of the initial stages of Israel’s current war on the Gaza Strip, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals. These factors, as described by current and former Israeli intelligence members, have likely played a role in producing what has been one of the deadliest military campaigns against Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948.  https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/

2023-10-31 THE LABYRINTH WAR   More than 8,000 residents of the Gaza Strip have been killed so far, forty percent of them children, according to the international aid group Defense for Children, in retaliation for Hamas’s terrorist attack on an all-night Israeli dance party, kibbutzim, and small farming villages in the south of Israel on October 7. Hamas still holds more than 230 Israeli hostages it seized on that murderous Saturday, when scarcely any Israeli forces appeared on the scene for as long as ten hours.

The Israeli death count for the Hamas attack of October 7 now stands at 1,400 and includes 317 members of the Israeli military—some of those victims may be military contractors—and 58 policemen. At least thirty Americans, according to the State Department, many of them working for NGOs, were also killed, and thirteen Americans are still unaccounted for. Dozens of those captured by Hamas—among them the very young and the very old—never made it to its tunnel system because they fell or, more likely, were flung off the bicycles or motorcycles that were carrying them and were immediately executed. 

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/the-labyrinth-war

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Human Soul

Updated 2024-01-05

2023-12-09 The Endless Dropping of Bombs Is Sabotaging Humanity’s Ability to Evolve      Will we be able to overcome the wreckage we are inflicting on ourselves?    The game of war is beyond human control! The lucky among us get to watch and roast marshmallows while it’s going on, hoping for the best. The unlucky ones get to watch their children die in the rubble, or get their own heads blown off. And if “a miscalculation amid tit-for-tat attacks” results in the use of nuclear weapons, well, too bad. It’s been good to know ya. We’re spectators at our own demise.

As Dennis Kucinich put it in a recent interview with Chris Hedges: “We have almost a closed-loop system that guarantees that we will continue to go to war. There is no counterbalance for diplomacy or peace. That doesn’t exist.”  War, in other words, does nothing but create the certainty of more war. And peace is no more than an occasional pause as the combatants reload. And there’s no official questioning of this world —certainly not by Congress, certainly not by the media. “So there’s very little deep thinking that goes on,” Kucinich added.    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/war-evolution-bombing

2023-11-24 Cornel West and Gabor Maté on Gaza and the Human Soul       The two discuss the incomparable heaviness of the war, shared philosophies, and their love of music.     “I don’t know about you,” Dr. Maté says to Dr. West, “but for me, what’s going on is one of the heaviest things, if not the heaviest thing, I’ve witnessed in my whole life. I don’t know how to compare tragedies, but there’s something about what’s going on right now that seems heavier and darker.”    West responds: “When you watch precious human beings being literally killed, crushed, demeaned, degraded, day after day, it makes you think that this particular historical moment has a certain grimness and darkness that others don’t.”    The two men use their complex histories with tragedy and suffering to analyze the horror of the current moment.  https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/cornel-west-and-gabor-mate-on-gaza

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Hostage Exchange – Israel Viewpoint

Updated 2023-12-02

2023-11-30 The color of pure evil: A commentary on the moral inequalities of Israel and Hamas  

[MEK Note:  The lies and hatred toward Palestinians expressed in this article are hard to fathom.  Israel has mostly released woman and children held in detention without charges, some for years, yet the author calls all of them murders and terrorists.  Meanwhile Israel has murdered over 15,000 civilians, mostly women, children and even babies and the author cheers for more of the same!  Every Palestinian is a Hamas!  Every Hamas a Terrorist! Every Terrorist must be eliminated!] 

Each night, Israelis are glued to their television screens, witnessing the return of hostages in a global media event broadcasted by Arab and international networks. The anticipation is palpable as people watch with bated breath, hoping to see innocent Israelis emerge from the clutches of their Hamas captors.

However, labeling the truce as a mere “hostage exchange” oversimplifies the complexity of the situation. Hamas has reluctantly released abducted children, babies, sick, and elderly individuals who suffered in underground terror tunnels in Gaza without adequate medical treatment. In contrast, Israel not only agreed to release convicted murderers and terrorists held in its prisons but also accepted a conspicuously unequal exchange, releasing three terrorists for each innocent Israeli.

Despite the significant concessions made by Israel, the nation’s moral stance remains resolute. The safe return of its citizens takes precedence, even at the high cost of halting military operations and releasing Palestinian terrorists. This underscores the unwavering commitment to prioritizing the well-being of its people over other considerations.

The most glaring difference between Israel and Hamas can be viewed in the fundamental belief in the sanctity of life and the glorification of death. The intrinsic value that the Jewish people place on life has come with a high cost, as evident through the hostage negotiations that have taken place throughout the humanitarian truce that began last Friday. While this has been a matter of significant public and political discourse, and even when faced with such a difficult strategic decision, Israeli leadership has demonstrated its adherence to the Jewish value of the sanctity of life.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-color-of-pure-evil-a-commentary-on-the-moral-inequalities-of-israel-and-hamas/ar-AA1kNSAB

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Hamas Attack – Israel Pre-Knowledge

Updated 2024-07-16

2024-06-17 Israeli military knew how Hamas planned to take hostages weeks before October 7: report   The IDF knew about Hamas’ plans to attack just weeks before October 7, Israeli broadcaster Kan reported.

The IDF’s Gaza Division had intel on Hamas’ training and hostage-taking strategies, Kan reported.  According to Kan, IDF intelligence officials even predicted Hamas would take 200-250 hostages.   The Israeli military knew about Hamas’ plans to attack southern Israel weeks before October 7 — even how many hostages the militant group planned to capture, according to a report from Israeli public broadcaster Kan.

The Israel Defense Force’s Gaza Division reportedly distributed an internal intelligence document on September 19, 2023, outlining the details of Hamas’ planned raid, according to Kan.

The document, which Kan reportedly saw, states that the IDF had observed Hamas conducting a series of trainings where militant fighters practiced attacking both Israeli military stations and civilian kibbutzim communities.

The IDF also knew, according to the document viewed by Kan, that Hamas trained its units on how to capture hostages and how to guard them once they were taken back to the Gaza Strip. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israeli-intel-knew-how-hamas-planned-to-take-hostages-weeks-before-october-7-report/ar-BB1ooFgT?

2023-12-05 Israeli officials knew of October 7 attack a year ago — but didn’t act: New York Times      or over a year, Israeli officials had detailed knowledge of the plan for the October 7 attack by Hamas forces — but, despite knowing about the devastation the incursion would cause, Israeli leaders declined to act, a new bombshell New York Times investigation reveals.

Documents, emails and interviews conducted by The Times show that Israeli military and intelligence officials possessed a 40-page blueprint for the attack. The document laid out specific plans for the attack, detailing which of Israel’s security measures Hamas forces planned to take out, including security cameras and automated machine guns around the border, and the points of the border wall Israel erected to sanction off Gaza that Hamas fighters would breach.https://www.salon.com/2023/12/05/israeli-officials-knew-of-october-7-a-year-ago–but-didnt-act-new-york-times_partner/

2023-12-01 Israel Knew What Hamas Was Planning   The October 7 attack on Israel by the terrorist group Hamas has already been widely regarded as a massive intelligence failure on the part of the Israeli military. But now, new information has been revealed that Israeli officials had access to a 40-page document, code-named “Jericho Wall,” which spelled out Hamas’ plan for the attack.

Ahough it did not specify when the horrifying acts would be carried out, it “described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters,” which Hamas ended up following “with shocking precision,” per The New York Times.

The conventional wisdom among Israeli authorities was that such a plan could not realistically be carried out by Hamas, which proved to be an underestimation   https://reason.com/2023/12/01/israel-knew-what-hamas-was-planning/#

2023-12-01 “Mass Assassination Factory”: Israel Using AI to Generate Targets in Gaza, Increasing Civilian We also discuss another recent report revealing that Israel may have received intelligence about Hamas’s planned attack more than a year in advance of October 7, but ignored it. New York Times exposé that Israel clearly knew a year ago the blueprint for this attack. And there are other reports, in Haaretz and other places, that say — I think they were called — the women surveillance soldiers along the Gaza border, I think they’re called spotters, were repeatedly telling their supervisors in the last weeks, in the last months, “We see this escalation here. It looks like Hamas is about to attack.” And they would be told they’d be brought up on insubordination charges if they kept pushing this issue. Yuval?  

You know, we, as Israeli journalists, are subjected to the military censors, so everything that I have published had to be vetted by the military. And also my knowledge is partial.   So, I’ve spoken to seven Israeli intelligence officers, some of them current, some of them former intelligence officers. All of them took part in wars against Gaza, in bombing campaigns, whether right now or in 2021, 2022 and 2014. And the use of artificial intelligence is an increasing trend that the army is adopting to mark targets in Gaza.   

And, you know, a source that actually took part in this division center said that they were being judged not by the quality of the targets that they were producing, but by the quantity, that the idea here was that if you want to create a certain shock effect, if you are fighting against a guerrilla group, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and/or Hamas in Gaza — this is the source saying — then — so, the source said that this shock effect is the way Israel views its war tactic against these organizations, and part of that is trying to accelerate the creation of targets. 

AMY GOODMAN: So, Yuval Abraham, if you can respond to what Blinken is saying? You know, at the beginning, after the October 7th attack, President Biden said that the support for Israel was unconditional, they could do anything they wanted. Now, clearly, with massive pushback in the United States with protests of people all over the country and around the world, you have both Biden and Blinken stepping back and saying you have to protect civilians. One of your sources suggested that the scale of this attack, with an unprecedented number of civilian casualties in Gaza, has to do in part with the Israeli military’s wish to redeem itself after the catastrophic failures of October 7th. And now you have this big New York Times exposé that Israel clearly knew a year ago the blueprint for this attack. And there are other reports, in Haaretz and other places, that say — I think they were called — the women surveillance soldiers along the Gaza border, I think they’re called spotters, were repeatedly telling their supervisors in the last weeks, in the last months, “We see this escalation here. It looks like Hamas is about to attack.” And they would be told they’d be brought up on insubordination charges if they kept pushing this issue. Yuval?   https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/1/israel_gaza_war_gospel_artificial_intelligence

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Genetic Testing

Updated 2023-12-02

Why Israel put a ban on Genetic testing ?  Dr. Areilla Oppenheim at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, did the first extensive DNA study in 2001 of Israelis & Palestinians, and concluded that the emigrants on ships to Palestine before it became Israel were of Mongol 40% & Turkish 40% genome…there was no Semetic blood associated to the original Hebrews from the Middle East of 4,000 years ago in Jerusalem or Biblical territory.

This was confirmed by another DNA project by Dr. Eran Elhaik at the McKusick-Namans Institute of Genetic Medicine at the John Hopkins University of School of Medicine, in 2012. His conclusions were the same!*   The Askenanzi did not ever migrate out of the Middle East!*

At the same time extensive DNA evidence found the Palestinians to be 80% more or less, Semetic blood in their ancestors who were found therefore to be the real Israelites.  

The white Jews whose ancestors embarked on ships in 1882 to Palestine before it was named Israel—aren’t Israelites. These White Eastern European descendants of German, Russian, Polish, Austrian, Georgian, etc., are impostors claiming to be Gods Chosen Ones, but are descendants of the old Khazars from the Khazarian Caucus & they have been denying this scientific evidence as they have made up myths of their own histories, which already many Americans believe throughout one whole century, i.e. Schofield Bible.

For, the real history of the new established “Israel in 1947” –‘is no secret today!*   Palestinians were found to be almost more or at least 80% Semetic.   https://rumble.com/v3vcqjs-the-khazars.html .

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Elon Musk

Updated 2023-12-02

2023-11-28 Elon Musk, on Visit to Israel, Says Those Intent on Murder Must Be ‘Neutralized’     Elon Musk said that those “intent on murder must be neutralized” after touring an Israeli community recently attacked by Hamas, weeks after the billionaire described an antisemitic social-media post on X as “the actual truth.”   Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday took Musk on a tour through Kfar Aza, a kibbutz attacked on Oct. 7. Netanyahu later showed Musk a video of the attacks on Israeli civilians, and the two men then livestreamed a conversation on X.https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/elon-musk-on-visit-to-israel-says-those-intent-on-murder-must-be-neutralized/ar-AA1kB0H9

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Disease Weaponized (see Genocide by Disease)

Updated 2024-04-24

2024-07-22 Advocates Say Biden Must Immediately Act to Stop Polio Outbreak in Gaza     Advocates for Palestinian rights are demanding that the Biden administration take urgent action to stop a potential outbreak of polio in Gaza after the virus that causes the deadly disease was found in Gaza’s wastewater, threatening an epidemic that would be nothing short of catastrophic.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says that Biden bears responsibility to respond to the crisis after funding Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health and sanitation systems, which has created conditions ripe for a deadly epidemic.

“Having enabled the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure and medical facilities in Gaza, the Biden administration has a duty to ensure that polio vaccines reach all those who need to be vaccinated,” said CAIR communications director Ibrahim Hooper in a statement Sunday.https://truthout.org/articles/advocates-say-biden-must-immediately-act-to-stop-polio-outbreak-in-gaza/

2023-12-11 Displacement, Disease and Death Plague Gazans as Israel Continues Its Genocidal Assault    Israel’s unrelenting assault on the Gaza Strip continues as the death toll has reached 18,000 Palestinians killed in just over two months. Airstrikes rocked the Nuseirat and Maghazi refugee camps in central Gaza overnight. At least 23 people were killed in Maghazi. Airstrikes also struck at least two residential homes in Rafah. Meanwhile, the ground battle is pushing ahead in Khan Younis, which is under heavy bombardment.

The mass displacement and war on the besieged territory has led to a public health disaster. The U.N.’s World Food Programme warns half of Gaza’s population of over 2 million people is starving and that nine out of 10 people are not able to eat every day. As clean water becomes more scarce, diarrhea, skin infections, acute viral hepatitis, scabies and measles are multiplying. Earlier today, the World Health Organization passed a resolution calling for immediate humanitarian aid access and an end to fighting in Gaza.   In the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, usually busy streets and commercial areas are empty today in observance of a general strike for Gaza. Global actions are also taking place today, including marches and calls to refrain from buying anything.

Meanwhile, a U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon is warning the likelihood of a “wider conflict” is increasing amid escalating cross-border violence between Israel and Hezbollah.    https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/11/headlines/displacement_disease_and_death_plague_gazans_as_israel_continues_its_genocidal_assault

2023-11-29 “Slow death”: Israel weaponizes disease in the Gaza genocide       On Monday, the World Health Organization issued a dire warning: Even after the relentless Israeli bombing that has left over 20,000 Gazans dead or missing, the death toll from infectious disease in the period ahead is likely to be even higher.   “We will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system,” Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for the WHO, said at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.

For two months, Israel has systematically targeted Gaza’s hospital system for destruction. To date, 207 health personnel have been killed, and 56 ambulances have been attacked. Twenty-six hospitals and 55 health centers have ceased operations.   In the latest horrific scene, footage has emerged of premature babies being left to die and decompose in hospital beds at Al-Naser Hospital after Palestinian medical personnel were forced at gunpoint to abandon them.   “We were subjected to a direct targeting operation by the Israeli forces after strangling the health system on the first day of the aggression by cutting off medical supplies, fuel and electricity,” said Palestinian Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra.

The destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system compounds the catastrophic consequences of the starvation and dehydration of the population by Israel’s blockade of food, fuel and water, and the mass displacement of nearly three-quarters of the population.    https://www.defenddemocracy.press/slow-death-israel-weaponizes-disease-in-the-gaza-genocide/

2023-11-28 Disease, Fueled by Blockade, Could Be Bigger Killer Than Bombs in Gaza: WHO    With the brief “humanitarian pause” between Israel and Hamas so far failing to result in the delivery of sufficient aid in Gaza, United Nations officials on Tuesday warned that the spread of disease could soon begin killing more Palestinian people than Israel’s bombs and raids.

Humanitarian groups have warned for weeks that Israel’s total blockade of Gaza—cutting off deliveries of fuel, water, food, and electricity access—quickly fueled outbreaks of gastrointestinal illnesses as sanitation and water treatment services ground to a halt.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has now recorded more than 44,000 cases of diarrhea and 70,000 acute respiratory infections in Gaza since Israel began its latest bombardment of the enclave on October 7, with cases of gastrointestinal illness for those aged five and older rising to more than 100 times the normal level earlier this month.

“Everybody everywhere has dire health needs now because they are starving, because they lack clean water and they’re crowded together,” said Margaret Harris, a spokesperson for WHO, at a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. “Basically, if you’re sick, if your child has diarrhea, if you’ve got a respiratory infection, you’re not going to get any [help].”   “Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system,” she added. https://www.commondreams.org/news/disease-gaza

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Climate Change Ignored for War

Updated 2024-08-24

2024-08-22 Climate Crisis & Election Roundtable: From Tim Walz’s Record to Project 2025 to Israel    Climate activists disrupted a DNC-adjacent event sponsored by ExxonMobil on Wednesday, the same day that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz formally accepted his nomination as vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. Walz has faced harsh criticism from Indigenous and environmental rights groups in Minnesota for his authorization of the Line 3 oil pipeline through Native treaty lands in the state. We host a roundtable discussion on the climate crisis and the Democratic Party’s response with Ojibwe lawyer and founder of the Giniw Collective Tara Houska; climate organizer Collin Rees, who was part of the ExxonMobil action at the DNC; and climate scientist Michael Mann.  Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHh_daM9cek&t=11s

2024-08-11 A Note on Noam Chomsky and Climate Collapse     As Noam once said, “if you assume there is no hope, you guarantee there will be no hope.”    In many of his recent writings, Noam Chomsky has warned that humanity has reached a very dangerous point because we are now living in a world of cascading crises.    

What’s happening in Gaza is an abomination, one that the leaders of this world are watching coldly from a distance. The same can be said about climate collapse, which is as real as the daily slaughtering of scores of innocent women and children in Gaza by Israel’s military. Our global institutions are incapable of doing anything meaningful about these crises. Real power is in the hands of the most powerful nation-states and their leaders have opted to turn a blind eye to both disasters so as not to disrupt business as usual. Profits and geostrategic interests take priority over human lives and the environment. This is as clear as day, and it has always been so since at least the emergence of capitalism and the rise of the nation-state.   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/noam-chomsky-climate-collapse

2024-06-06 ‘Horrific’: Israel’s War on Gaza Also Destroying the Climate, Study Finds     In addition to its death toll, Israel’s war in Gaza comes at great cost to the climate, mainly because of the emissions that will be required to reconstruct tens of thousands of buildings there, a study published Thursday shows.

The study looked at the first four months of the war, during which time the authors estimated that some 156,000 to 200,000 buildings were destroyed or damaged in the Gaza Strip. The resulting climate costs were greater than the annual emissions of each of the world’s 135 lowest-emitting countries, the study, a preprint that was posted to SSRN and is currently under peer review, shows.

Though the vast majority of the estimated climate cost comes from the future rebuild, the study authors also looked at the immediate climate emissions from wartime activities, most of which came from flights by Israeli fighter jets and U.S. cargo planes that supplied weapons, fuel, and other supplies. There were 244 round-trip cargo flights from the U.S. to Israel during the four-month study period. https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-climate

2024-01-12 Opinion: Climate movement splinters as activists target Israel   Ever since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack and Israel’s counteroffensive, prominent climate activist groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and Fridays for Future have led anti-Israel protests, attempting to align the Palestinian cause with the global climate cause. But this messaging is deeply flawed, and as a 24-year-old Jewish climate commentator, I fear it could seriously divide and impede the climate movement.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/opinion-climate-movement-splinters-as-activists-target-israel/ar-AA1mTqEa

2024-01-11 Measuring the carbon ‘boot print’ of Israel’s war in Gaza   The planet-warming emissions generated during the first two months of the war in Gaza were greater than the annual carbon footprint of more than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, new research reveals.

The vast majority (over 99%) of the 281,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2 equivalent) estimated to have been generated in the first 60 days following the 7 October Hamas attack can be attributed to Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by researchers in the UK and US.  According to the study, which is based on only a handful of carbon-intensive activities and is therefore probably a significant underestimate, the climate cost of the first 60 days of Israel’s military response was equivalent to burning at least 150,000 tons of coal.    https://thebulletin.org/2024/01/measuring-the-carbon-boot-print-of-israels-war-in-gaza/#post-heading

2023-11-27 A Slow-Motion Gaza as We Destroy Planet Earth   Imagine this: humanity in its time on Earth has already come up with two distinct ways of destroying this planet and everything on it. The first is, of course, nuclear weapons, which once again surfaced in the ongoing nightmare in the Middle East. (An Israeli minister recently threatened to nuke Gaza.) The second, you won’t be surprised to learn, is what we’ve come to call “climate change” or “global warming” — the burning, that is, of fossil fuels to desperately overheat our already flaming world. In its own fashion, that could be considered a slow-motion version of the nuking of the planet.

Put another way, in some grim sense, all of us now live in Gaza. (Most of us just don’t know it yet.)      Yes, if you actually do live in Gaza, your life is now officially a living (or dying) hell on Earth. Your home has been destroyed, your family members wounded or killed, the hospital you fled to decimated. And that story, sadly enough, has been leading the news day after day for weeks now. But in the process, in some sense even more sadly, the deepest hell of our time has largely disappeared from sight.

I’m thinking about the urge to turn our whole planet into a long-term, slow-motion version of Gaza, to almost literally set it ablaze and destroy it as a habitable place for humanity (and so many other species).

Yes, in the midst of the ongoing Middle Eastern catastrophe, the latest study by James Hanson, the scientist who first sounded the climate alarm to Congress back in the 1980s, appeared. In it, he suggested that, in this year of record temperatures, our planet is heating even more rapidly than expected. The key temperature danger mark, set only eight years ago at the Paris climate agreement, 1.5 degrees Centigrade above the pre-industrial level, could easily be reached not in 2050 or 2040, but by (or even before) 2030. Meanwhile, another recent study suggests that humanity’s “carbon budget” — that is, the amount of carbon we can put into the atmosphere while keeping global temperature rise at or under that 1.5-degree mark — is now officially going to hell in a handbasket. In fact, by October, a record one-third of the days in 2023 had broken that 1.5-degree mark in what is undoubtedly going to prove another — and yes, I know how repetitive this is — record year for heat.

In fact, it’s past time to start talking about World War III, even if this time it’s a war on the planet itself.   https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/gaza-world-war-iii-climate

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

.

Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World