Who is responsible for that mass-murderous strike on the Al Ahli Baptist Hospital? It’s not the most important question arising from the genocide in Gaza, I grant you. That ‘honour’ goes to whether and how soon this tiny hell on earth goes region-wide and by that fact global.
What’s more, even in the event – off the scale unlikely as it seems to me – that it was indeed a stray Hamas rocket which mowed down hundreds of screaming civilians on October 17, it was the IDF’s already declared intent to slay indiscriminately …
We are fighting human animals and … imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Israel Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant
The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy … Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari
… which ensured that so many were packed into that compound in the first place. 1
Nevertheless, Brian Berletic’s podcast today appraises the atrocity not just to get closer to the narrow truth of whodunnit, but to deliver a masterclass in how Western war propaganda works. As more and more of us grow mistrustful of our governments’ claims – Saddam’s WMDs, Assad “gassing children” – the need to ‘launder’ them is being met by a rapidly evolving propaganda ecosystem. It takes in fake experts, ‘think tanks‘, armies of social media sock puppets and of course our systemically corrupt mainstream media.
Over to you Brian …
* * *
- Though occasioned by the October 7 attack by Hamas, such comments as Gallant’s and Hagari’s have a longer pedigree. See “Gaza should be wiped clean with bombs!” Nor can I rule out a false flag element to that attack, though this now seems scarcely relevant. Whether Netanyahu’s deeply divisive regime was (to take the mildest form of false flag thesis) forewarned by Cairo but chose to ignore the warning is secondary to the fact of a Gaza calculatedly provoked. As Caitlin Johnstone put it:
The real goal has always been to … push an inconvenient people into an impossible corner and then when they push back hard enough say “Well, we did all we can and we learned you just can’t help these savages. They’re going to have to go.”
For more on Israel’s very own Final Solution, see Kit Klarenberg’s piece today on ICH, Zionist think tank publishes blueprint for Palestinian genocide. Its focus is a white paper produced last week by a faction within the ruling Likud Party, arguing for the total ethnic cleansing, via Egypt, of Gaza. In a finale that does nothing to dispel the false flag thesis – Israel’s 9/11, Pearl Harbour or, as Bruce Neuburger puts it yet more provocatively in CounterPunch today, Israel’s Kristallnacht – the paper concludes:
There is no doubt that in order for this plan to come to fruition, many conditions must exist at the same time. Currently, these conditions are met and it is unclear when such an opportunity will arise again, if ever. This is the time to act. Now.
The degree of disconnect from reality of those pushing htese narratives is criminally insane.
Over at The Duran……
https://www.rokfin.com/post/153042/Haley-demands-UN-Guterres-resign-Macrons-plan-to-fight-Hamas-Elensky-delusions-of-grandeur-U1
…….at the six minute eight seconds mark a tweet from US Republican nominee hopeful Nikki Haley is shown with the following statement:
Quote:
“The Secretary General of the UN should know nothing justifies beheading babies, burning people alive and raping young girls.
He owes the people of Israel an apology.
This is disgusting and disqualifies him from leading the UN”
Unquote.
Not a single one of the three hyperbolic claims in this little tots tantrum from Nikki Haley can be substantiated with any credible evidence. Even the rabid Western media have given up flogging the dead horse contained in this desperate and delusional self-serving pile of bollocks.
Meanwhile, as previously highlighted the allegations echoed by Haley and the deranged Fascist mobsters running the US and Israel that 1,700 civilians were murdered, raped, beheaded etc on 7th October is being called into question in Israel itself.
With interviews from civilian participants which claim at the very least a proportion of civilian casualties were caused by deliberate targeting of civilians by IDF forces.
Before any action is taken all claims need to be subjected to proper evidence testing through due process means. Unfortunately, what we are getting from the rabid dog that is the Western Political Class is a lynch mob after blood for the humiliation it has suffered rather than any grown up approach.
Short of someone doing the world a favour by carrying out the Henry II solution it seems quite clear that there is no possibility of sufficient timely progress in the UN to prevent the appalling loss of life taking place. The US will continue to thwart any diplomatic moves which prevent it from getting its own way. In this, neither what passes for the US or Israeli Governments do not care how isolated they are in the World and those in control are clearly quite prepared to shatter the whole planet and commit unprecedented levels of mass murder towards anyone who gets in their way in order that, like all spoiled brats, they can get their own way.
I still have liberal pals tell me Putin and Lavrov, Xi and Wang Yi, are glorified mobsters and tyrants. But watch what they say and do. (Something, incidentally, liberal critics never quite get round to doing, textbook cases as they are of weak opinions strongly held.) Then compare the depth and longitude of their thinking with the glib, shallow, know-nothingness of Biden, Blinken, Haley, Nuland and Sullivan – spoilt and graceless children who never learned diplomacy because the “indispensable nation” delusion told them they didn’t need to. (Ditto Israel’s leadership which, like Kiev’s post 2014, never felt they needed to engage with their adversaries because Uncle Sam had their backs.)
Worse, neither the neoliberals nor neocons in DC are reined in by any adviser cadre of culture and historical gravitas. Those types – the Stephen Cohens and John Mearsheimers – were driven out long ago by that philistine climate which follows neoliberalism as night on day.
Add to this the gleeful mendacity you refer to and what’s the upshot? At this, the most perilous juncture of my life, two aircraft carrier groups steam into the Med with no plan or goal beyond “projecting US power and holding off any Bad Guys From Tthe Other Team who might think to Capitalise On The Sitch”. With such US leadership – an oxymoron? – to pour petrol on the flames, and an EU whose irrelevance is personified by the corrupt and inept Queen Ursula, any real way forward is going to come from the BRICs.
If it’s not too late. The bad news is that it may well be. The good news is that, if it isn’t, a global south led by China and inspired by Russia is in no mood to return to a rotten status quo.
Oh – and the anachronism of France and UK on the Security Council? That has to go!
The elephant in the room is how much longer will the Global Majority put up with the tantrums of the Collective West in the UN which is preventing any meaningful progress or way out?
We need proper due process. Yet every moment it is delayed by the lynch mob the Collective West has become is costing lives and enabling War Crimes which could very quickly result in the effective genocide – as in complete erasure – of an entire people.
That lynch mob may well be isolated morally and politically by the Global Majority. Yet, with their self-satisfied airs and graces of exceptionalism and indispensability none of those running and controlling this lynch mob gives a FF.
With this as the given context there is a urgent requirement to think outside the box. Certainly anachronisms like the UK and France on the Security Council needs to be addressed. But how long will that take and will there be any Palestinians left after such a lengthy process?
Because it is quite clear from the stance taken and language used this week that no ‘binding’ resolution in either the Security Council or the General Assembly is going to sway the lynch mob from its purpose. Nicky Haley has already declared that the US will be pulling out of the UN Human Rights body and setting up its own. No doubt a ‘rules based order’ body in which the US makes the rules and everybody else obeys the orders.
Adding to that moral and political isolation by isolating the lynch mob diplomatically in the UN has a better than even chance of seeing them flounce out altogether – doubtless taking Israel in the absence of any concessions by the Secretary General – along with any “allies” dumb and arrogant enough to follow them at a time of their choosing.
The alternative would be for the global Majority to take that control away by kicking the US and Israel out and daring the rest of the rump to follow them out of the door. It would mean moving the UN to another site – which is long overdue anyway.
Followed by measures to enforce complete isolation of those involved from all world and global systems. Which is an option in both potential scenarios – flouncing out or being kicked out.
The other practical problematic issue arising from the present context is how to prevent the Israeli Regime and its military apparatus from its planned invasion of Gaza after softening up with several weeks of indiscriminate and criminal bombing.
With the US adamant in the UN against any ceasefire such an action will very quickly escalate out of control. With local and regional actors forced to respond kinetically which will inevitably result in widening out the conflict. Dragging in the Russians and the Chinese – possibly on an R2P pretext?
The only practical option would appear to be for sufficient protective troops to be put on the ground to protect Gaza and give time for due process, to test the allegations of the Israeli Regime which is using those allegations as a pretext, along with an International Conference which is not controlled or dictated to by the Western powers.
Whilst it would be preferable such a decision be UN authorised the present impasse may well preclude it. In that event it is probably the best option for the surrounding Arab nations acting in concert to adopt in order to maintain the necessary level of legitimate State control rather than risking uncontrolled escalation via groups such as Hezbollah and the Western controlled Jihadist “moderate’ rebels.
That question is very much the focus of the discussion yesterday, between Jeffrey Sachs and Alexander Mercouris, featured in my post this morning.
“The alternative would be for the global Majority to take that control away by kicking the US and Israel out and daring the rest of the rump to follow them out of the door. It would mean moving the UN to another site”
This is the logical culmination of the BRICS/Bridge & Road/CSO/EEU effort. Imagine that Putin and Xi have considered this. I wonder how far planning has gone.
Watching what’s happening with increasing horror, and agree with all your posts on this. I’ve little to add, just appreciate your input.
Would just add the obvious point that the oxymoron re leadership applies to so many. They’re revealing themselves for the utterly amoral bastards that they are and millions around the world are sickened.
Hello Margaret – great to know you’re still around and on the case.
As to your second paragraph, I not only agree but – see my reply a few minutes ago to Dave Hansell – have featured just today a Duran discussion which does recognise that “millions around the world are sickened”. Not only that, they are coming to envisage a different road for humanity.
On the subject of oxymoronic leadership here’s David Hearst writing on Middle East Eye three days ago – which has been republished at Strategic Culture yesterday:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-war-labour-starmer-gaza-betrayal-leader-failing-shows
To be frank it is difficult to single out a stand out teaser quote without reproducing the whole piece.
The description of the situation in Labour’s Muslim voting constituency and the panic it is causing is terminal. However, I’ll limit the quote to the following:
Whilst I cannot find the source of this quote from the piece…..
“A senior adviser to Starmer was asked how many Gazans have to die before Labour will call for a ceasefire. The reply came: “As many as it takes…””
…..the fact that it is already out there is sufficient to scupper any realistic chances the LP may have of forming a government whilst Starmer and that wing of the Party remain in place.
Which leaves open the question of whether its possible for this Country to have a functioning and electable Government as matters stand?
Unfortunately the lumpen proletariat in the UK couldn’t care less about Gaza, and will elect any old reactionary tory-substitute like Starmer without blinking an eye, so, functioning (after a fashion) and electable government – yes. Effective, efficient and ethical government – no. But have we ever had a government with all three qualities? Certainly none with the latter. And we never will have unless we introduce some sort of ‘sortition’ based system.
Dear Phil,
I remember reading about the oil & gas fields off the Gaza strip. Israel covets this source of revenue and the only “legitimate” way to plunder it, would of course, require getting rid of the Palestinians in Gaza. No Gaza, no problem!
As soon as I read how BP had signed away the rights to the gas revenues bypassing the Palestinians I knew it was only a matter of time before the Israelis made a push to further ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from their rightful revenue.
Being somewhat naive I made the wrong assumption in that I had not taken into consideration the exceptional “false flag” way the US and now Israel apply their particular talents, if somewhat murderous(nothing new in that)to manufacture entitlement.
Obscured in the news was Sakashvili’s attempt to gain access to Georgia(he’s banned)
to aid the US latest & greatest attempt to forge a new Proxy patsy against Russia. The attempt failed and the current Georgian Premier went public in condemning the attack for the tactic it was.
Have signed various petitions for and on behalf of Palestinians, American JVP and Israeli Jewish Refusers but can’t really get to the demonstrations. Signing my name and sending money to powerful organisations may be a cop out but my options are limited.
Keep on posting!
Susan:)