Hamas
Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report
After dismantling a New York Times front page feature alleging “a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” by Hamas, The Grayzone is demanding answers of the paper for its journalistic malpractice. The following was submitted to New York Times editors and lead author, Jeffrey Gettleman. The Grayzone has identified serious issues with the credibility of key sources quoted in the New York Times’ December 28 story, “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7.” Authored […]
The post Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report appeared first on The Grayzone.
Pro-Israel lawyer group tries to threaten Tower Hamlets to take down Palestine flags
UK Lawyers for Israel waves criminality threat at mayor Lutfur Rahman and council with claim local Jews feel threatened – a tactic seen and discredited before – but police already said in October no offence had been committed
Right-wing pro-Israel pressure group ‘UK Lawyers for Israel’ (UKLFI) has tried to force Tower Hamlets council and its mayor Lutfur Rahman to remove Palestinian flags put up by residents in solidarity with people facing occupation and genocide in Gaza – by threatening Rahman and his colleagues with criminalisation if they do not.
The group has form. Manchester University – to widespread outrage in the art world – pressured its museum director to resign for daring to host a display by Forensic Architecture, the science group that has criticised the Israeli regime for extrajudicial killings and other illegal actions, after UKLFI claimed the display was provocative. Forensic Architecture is also known for having debunked Israeli military lies attempting to blame the bombing of Al Ahli hospital in Gaza, which killed hundreds of refugees sheltering there, on a misfired Hamas rocket.
UKLFI also pressured Chelsea and Westminster hospital into taking down a harmless display of plates painted by Palestinian children by claiming Jewish patients had said they were distressed by them – but a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that not a single complaint had been made by patients or visitors.
The group was criticised by Jewish human rights group Na’amod for inviting an Israeli right-wing extremist group to speak in the UK and has been accused of links with the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs. The European Legal Support Centre accused UKLFI of using ‘lawfare’ as a ‘politically motivated’ weapon and said that the group “has been attempting to smear and disrupt the work of Palestinian human rights groups and their partners for years”.
UKLFI paid an out of court settlement to a Palestinian children’s charity it had libelled by claiming the charity gave “financial or material support to any terrorist organization” and admitted that UKLFI supported the ‘Ministry of Strategic Affairs’, an ‘Israeli black-ops department’ that tries to undermine the ‘Boycott Divestment and Sanctions’ campaign against the Israeli occupation and to delegitimise Palestinian solidarity actions globally. Broadcast regulator Ofcom rejected a UKLFI complaint that a Channel 4 video featuring Palestinian young people was unfair to it.
Tower Hamlets council appeared to call the group’s bluff. A council spokesperson said:
As one of the most diverse areas in the country, we are monitoring any community tensions closely with our tension monitoring group, which includes the police and representatives from a broad range of community organisations.
A number of Palestinian flags have been put up by the public in recent months. While we appreciate people want to express their support for Palestine, we have a routine responsibility to monitor and maintain council infrastructure. The situation is under regular review…
We are not aware of any criminal offences related to Palestinian flags not being removed, and we will continue to work closely with police partners to manage the situation.
And the council has reason to be confident. When attempts – not explicitly linked to UKLFI in reports – were made in October to us a similar tactic to force it to remove Palestinian, the Met Police said that as far as they were concerned, no criminal act had been committed.
Israeli families demand investigation as truth about mass ‘friendly fire’ deaths starts to percolate
‘Immense’ Israeli death toll from IDF shells, missiles and bullets is already on record – now Israeli families demand immediate investigation
Furious Israeli families have demanded an immediate investigation into the deaths of their loved ones caused by Israeli military fire during the 7 October Hamas raid.
The fact of ‘immense’ deaths to so-called ‘friendly fire’ has already been very quietly admitted by the IDF and reported by Israeli media, but has been ignored by western ‘mainstream’ media – including the UK’s – and have been slow to percolate into the awareness of ordinary Israelis, but the evidence is overwhelming that many and probably most of those killed during that day were killed by IDF weapons, fired either in panic and incompetence or as part of the military’s ‘Hannibal directive‘ to kill potential captives rather than allow them to be taken.
Ynet’s report of the IDF’s claim it would be wrong to investigate deaths because the number of deaths is ‘immense’
But awareness and outrage appear to be growing. Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that:
Family members of Israelis who were killed on October 7 after a standoff between Hamas terrorists and the Israeli army led to the army firing a tank at a house where the civilians were held hostage are demanding that the military probe its actions that day.
According to the paper, the families are insisting that the investigation take place right now and not, as the regime has proposed, after the ‘war’.
As journalist Jonathan Cook noted:
Their concerns have been heightened by the recent admission from an Israeli commander that he ordered a tank to fire a shell into a house where 14 Israelis had been taken hostage by Hamas in Be’eri. Many of those hostages were incinerated by the shell, along with the Hamas fighters. Nonetheless, Israel cited the charred bodies as proof of Hamas’ barbarity, and justification for its subsequent genocidal campaign in Gaza – rather than as evidence of its own scorched-earth policy, one indifferent to the lives of its own civilians.
Similarly, the incinerated bodies of Israelis found in cars at a rave near the kibbutz and near the Gaza border were caused by weapons that Hamas does not have – and released hostages have testified that they were protected and treated well by Hamas fighters but were fired on by Israeli helicopters and plans as their captors took them across the border, killing many.
So intense was this firestorm that for weeks the Israeli regime thought that some two hundred bodies it initially thought were Israelis were in fact Palestinians – and clearly Hamas did not incinerate them. Israeli police have also confirmed that many killed at the rave were in fact shot by Israeli helicopters.
The Israeli mainstream media have in fact been more honest than their UK and US counterparts in reporting these facts. Now that the families are demanding action, will UK papers and broadcasters finally start to cover them? Don’t hold your breath.
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Exclusive: Dublin airport rebrands Starbucks cafe – but still selling Starbucks products
Airport says Starbucks sales are a ‘temporary’ measure as critics point to boycott over Gaza and firm’s conduct toward unions
A ‘new’ cafe in Dublin airport’s Terminal 1 is still selling Starbucks products under a different brand name, Skwawkbox can reveal.
The airport announced the opening of its new ‘Vista’ cafe on Thursday in what is said was a unit ‘previously occupied by Starbucks:
But critics were quick to link the announcement to the boycott of Starbucks by many in response to the firm’s links to Israel and its ongoing anti-union activities in the US, with hundreds of responses like the examples below:
I think this is still Starbucks they've just rebranded the name of the café to try and avoid the ongoing boycott. If you zoom in you can see the Starbucks menu, plus they're still using Starbucks cups! There's also zero online presence for "Vista Coffee" – it doesn't exist!
— James M (@MamesJolloy) January 4, 2024
Why is there what looks like a @Starbucks logo in the corner of the left hand screen?
Can you clarify whether this is a rebranding of the existing outlet or has the new one stolen Starbuck's property?
Hope you can clarify; I'm sure you don't want to be associated with theft. pic.twitter.com/xipWJA1eTm— Brian (@LifeOfBOS) January 5, 2024
Starbucks has seen its share price hit since the boycott on sales, despite the company CEO issuing a statement that Starbucks ‘condemns violence, hate, lies and weaponised speech – he did not mention Israel or Gaza in the statement – and that Starbucks ‘stand[s] for humanity’.
Starbucks in the US has been engaged in a long campaign against unionisation by workers that saw leaked video in 2022 show the firm’s founder begging store managers to step up their anti-union activities – and the firm suing the union for trademark infringement. Boycott calls grew after a post went out on the Starbucks Workers Union official Twitter account posted a message of solidarity with Palestine after the widely-misrepresented Hamas raid last October and Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza that has killed over 30,000 civilians, more than two thirds of them children and women. Starbucks share price has fallen by around seven percent since the boycott. It is not the only global brand to see profits fall – McDonalds’ CEO has admitted that the business has taken a ‘meaningful’ hit.
A spokesperson for Dublin airport confirmed that the Vista cafe is using Starbucks products, but told Skwawkbox that both the brand and the product usage were temporary and that the Starbucks cafe closed because its contract had run out:
Vista is a temporary brand. Starbucks closed at the end of December as their contract expired. An exciting new local coffee brand will be permanently moving into this location in March. Until then, the new operator (using Starbucks’ products) is running the unit temporarily as Vista, ensuring passengers get their caffeine fix.
This change is part of a major overhaul of the food and beverage offerings in T1 and T2 at Dublin Airport which will happen over the coming months. Passengers will see several units operate on a temporary basis in the short term – under generic brands – while the fit-out works are completed.
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Israel and media ‘Hamas rape’ claims collapse under scrutiny
‘Eye-witness’ accounts contradict evidence – and earlier claims of the eye-witnesses – as yet another atrocity propaganda campaign falls apart. Warning: potential triggering or distressing content
The outraged reaction of the family of an alleged ‘Hamas rape’ victim to a newspaper’s con is just one of the ways in which the ‘Hamas rape’ narrative now being pushed hard by the Israeli regime and its apologists has fallen apart hard – like every other piece of atrocity propaganda Israel has tried to use so far to justify its genocide in Gaza.
The New York Times has published an article claiming to have evidence of the weaponisation of rape by Hamas during the 7 October raid, but the centrepiece of its claims was supposed ‘evidence’ that Israeli woman Gal Abdush was raped and murdered by Hamas fighters, quoting extensively from an interview with her family.
But her family has furiously insisted that there is no evidence that Ms Abdush was raped – and slammed the paper for misleading and manipulating them by telling them the interview was for a memorial about her and her husband and not mentioning anything about rape.
Speak Up, which fights violence against women, condemned the NYT investigation as ‘disgraceful’ ‘weaponisation’ of sexual violence for propaganda
The family – who appear to be hardline right-wingers perfectly prepared to propagate the already-discredited Israeli lines about beheadings and dismemberments, and therefore not inclined to discredit the rape report out of support for Palestinians – responded after the article was published. They pointed out, among other things, that there were only a few minutes passed between one message from their sister’s husband that they were at the Gaza border and another saying she had been shot – no time for the rape claimed by Israeli authorities and the NYT:
Gal Abdush’s family’s statement (translation by David Sheen and Electronic Intifada)
In fact, the family’s comment – though they don’t seem to have joined the dots – suggests that Ms Abdush and her husband were killed by Israeli forces determined, under the ‘Hannibal directive‘ of killing potential hostages rather than allowing them to be taken, since ‘at the border’ the Hamas fighters would only have been interested in getting them into captivity – and Hamas had no weapons capable of leaving bodies ‘totally burned’, while Israeli planes and helicopter gunships armed with missiles did and it is now well known in Israel, if ignored by UK and US media, that IDF forces killed Israelis in their determination to eliminate Hamas fighters holding them.
Another element of the atrocity propaganda to collapse are the lurid tales from supposed eye-witnesses who claimed that Hamas fighters – while trying to flee with their captives or fight Israeli troops – stopped to rape and dismember a woman and play catch with her body parts.
The ‘eyewitnesses’ have changed their stories. One was interviewed earlier and neglected to mention the claims of beheadings and games; another – coincidentally an Israeli ‘security consultant’ – had earlier admitted that he saw nothing because he was hiding with his head down the whole time, yet now claims he saw the same as the other witness.
Haaretz, 8 Nov 2023
Not only that, but Israeli lists of victims and their means of death do not claim to have found people at the site in question who had been beheaded or mutilated.
Another ‘eyewitness’ to a different supposed rape, Raz Cohen, happens to have recently been in the Democratic Republic of Congo, training DRC soldiers. While he claims to have seen the rape and to be haunted by the victim’s ‘screams without words’, shortly after the Hamas raid he filmed himself talking about the incident and published it on TikTok – where he seems upbeat and doesn’t mention any of the claims now attributed to him. Journalist Max Blumenthal analysed the changes in Cohen’s testimony:
While much of the NYT “mass Hamas rape” report relies on innuendo, it also purports to contain several credible eyewitness testimonies. One was delivered by a survivor of the Nova electronic music festival named Raz Cohen, who also happens to be an Israeli special forces vet who trains Congolese soldiers. Since his first interview on October 9, Cohen has altered his testimony several times.
Cohen told the NYT he personally witnessed a white van filled with Hamas militants pull up a mile from the Nova music festival, gather over a woman, and gang rape her: “I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words.” He said they then butchered the woman with knives.
When Cohen was interviewed on October 9 about the attack on the music festival, however, he did not mention any act of sexual assault committed by Hamas militants. See here: https://twitter.com/i24NEWS_EN/sta… And here: http://tiktok.com/@lior.shapira9…
A day later, Cohen began to introduce vague suggestions of sexual assault into his testimony, but did not indicate that he witnessed any such acts taking place. “The terrorists captured women and hurt them in any way possible, and when they were done with them, they started butchering them in front of their friends,” Cohen told an Israeli publication: http://ashkelnayes.co.il/%D7%97%D7%A8%D…
Cohen was also interviewed by Canada’s CBC on October 10, but was not quoted about witnessing any rape: http://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/20…
The same day, Cohen offered lurid new details to PBS, claiming that “the terrorists” not only slaughtered women after raping them on October 7, but engaged in necrophilia as well: “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed — and after they raped, they — they did that.” http://pbs.org/newshour/show/…
Testimony he provided to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on October 11 differed slightly, and remained vague: “We see from there a lot of people and girls screaming and murdered by knives. And the girls, the terrorists rape them,” he stated abruptly and without apparent emotion. http://tiktok.com/@abcnewsaus/vi…
By this point, no Israeli media had reported that any rapes occurred on October 7. Cohen quickly fell off the media’s radar. He would not be heard from for over two months, when the Israeli government launched an international propaganda campaign accusing Hamas of mass rape in a transparent bid to maintain international support for its genocidal military assault on Gaza.
At this point, when the NY Times’ Jeffrey @gettleman interviewed Cohen, likely reaching him with assistance from the Israeli government, the “IDF” special forces soldier summoned for the first time a vivid account of a shocking gang rape on October 7.
How and why did Cohen’s story transform so dramatically over time, providing explosive new details at a moment of political urgency for the army in which he served? Was it plausible that a group of hardened Hamas commandoes suddenly paused their surprise attack, which was focused on taking as many captives as quickly as possible, stood in a circle and gang raped a woman, one after another, while Israeli forces mobilized to attack them?
Why did Hamas militants use knives to kill their victims, as Cohen alleged, when they carried rifles and grenades? Why did he drop his earlier allegation of necrophilia when speaking to the Times? And why did he mention seeing “a lot of people and girls” being raped to the ABC on October 11, but alter his testimony to refer specifically to a single female victim when interviewed by the Times?
Perhaps most importantly, why did Cohen’s friend, Shoam Gueta, who took shelter with him on October 7, not describe witnessing a gang rape when interviewed by the Times?
In his very first interview, with a US news station only two days after the Hamas raid, Cohen appeared mostly relaxed – and didn’t mention anyone being raped, as this clip aired recently on Grayzone shows:
Other Israeli mouthpieces have tried to bypass the eyewitnesses altogether, claiming it would be wrong to expect eyewitnesses to come forward and that ‘the corpses tell the story’. But they don’t, because the bodies were buried without evidence being taken, using Jewish burial practices to justify the failure to collect evidence – just as the huge number of cars incinerated by weapons Hamas does not possess were scrapped and buried without collecting evidence. Not one piece of actual evidence appears to have been put forward by Israel, yet the atrocity propaganda continues to be repeated by the so-called ‘mainstream’.
Yet again, Israel’s attempts to demonise Palestinian resistance to justify genocide have fallen apart under scrutiny – scrutiny that the so-called ‘mainstream’ press and broadcasters are simply not doing, or even reporting facts that media in Israel have already acknowledged, such as the mass killing of Israelis during the raid by Israeli media.
For full analysis and more video highlighting the collapse of yet another Israeli atrocity propaganda narrative, watch this video by Electronic Intifada and this by Grayzone.
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Washington Post erases Israeli minister’s farfetched October 7 rape claim at his request
A note explaining the retraction of the claim that Hamas militants had specific orders as to “which commander should rape which soldiers” indicates the publication censored itself at the behest of the Israeli government. The Washington Post has quietly removed an outlandish claim by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that Hamas battle plans included specific instructions on which Israeli troops should be raped during their October 7 incursion. In the original article, which was published on November 12 and promoted […]
The post Washington Post erases Israeli minister’s farfetched October 7 rape claim at his request first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Washington Post erases Israeli minister’s farfetched October 7 rape claim at his request appeared first on The Grayzone.
Israel ‘kills several’ in two new attacks on Red Crescent HQ in Khan Younis
Occupier targets humanitarian group – again
Israel has killed ‘several people’ in two separate attacks on the Khan Younis HQ of the International Red Crescent humanitarian organisation in Gaza. The group, the sister organisation in Muslim areas of the International Red Cross, has not yet put a number on how many were killed and injured.
The attacks are the second and third times in just over a week that Israel has targeted the Red Crescent HQ – with the first attack taking place just after Christmas:
The bombings come om the day that the genocidal regime also destroyed buildings and killed civilians in a missile strike in Lebanese capital Beirut, claiming to have targeted a Hamas building to assassinatea single official of the Palestinian resistance group, Saleh Al Arouri, in yet another extra-judicial murder. The attack is likely to trigger retaliatory strikes by Lebanese forces, perhaps in the form of long-range rockets.
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The Spark That Lit the Fire: The Untold Story of the October 7 Attacks
The dramatic, earth-shattering events in Palestine starting on October 7 have taken many people by surprise. However, attentive observers were not among them.
Few expected that Palestinian fighters would be parachuting into southern Israel on October 7; that instead of capturing a single Israeli soldier – as done in 2006 – hundreds of Israelis, including many soldiers and civilians, would find themselves captive in besieged Gaza.
The reason behind the ‘surprise,’ however, is the same reason that Israel is still reeling under collective shock, which is the tendency to pay close attention to political discourses and intelligence analyses of Israel and its supporters – while largely neglecting the Palestinian discourse.
For better comprehension, let us go back to the start.
The Spark
We entered 2023 with some depressing data and dark predictions about what was awaiting Palestinians in the new year.
Just before the year commenced, the United Nations Mideast envoy, Tor Wennesland, said 2022 was the most violent year since 2005. “Too many people, overwhelmingly Palestinian, have been killed and injured,” Wennesland told the UN Security Council.
This figure – 171 killed and hundreds wounded in the West Bank alone – did not receive much coverage in Western media. The mounting number of Palestinian victims, however, registered among Palestinians and their Resistance movements.
As anger and calls for revenge grew among ordinary Palestinians, their leadership continued to play its same traditional role – of pacifying Palestinian calls for resistance while continuing with its ‘security coordination’ with Israel.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, 88, carried on rehashing the old language about a two-state solution and the ‘peace process’ while cracking down on Palestinians who dared protest his ineffectual leadership.
Defenseless in the face of a far-right Israeli government with an open agenda to crush Palestinians, to expand illegal settlements and to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, Palestinians were forced to develop their defensive strategies.
The Lions’ Den – a multi-factional Resistance group that first appeared in Nablus in August 2022 – grew in power and appeal. Other groups, old and new, emerged on the scene throughout the northern West Bank, with the single objective of uniting Palestinians around a non-factional agenda and, ultimately, producing a new Palestinian leadership in the West Bank.
These developments sounded alarm bells in Israel. The Israeli occupation army moved quickly to crush the new armed rebellion, raiding Palestinian towns and refugee camps one after the other, with the hope of turning this nascent revolution into another failed attempt to challenge the status quo in occupied Palestine.
The bloodiest of the Israeli incursions occurred in Nablus on February 23, Jericho on August 15 and, most importantly, in the Jenin refugee camp.
The July 3 Israeli invasion of Jenin was reminiscent, in terms of casualties and degree of destruction, of the Israeli invasion of that very camp in April 2002.
The outcome, however, was not the same. Back then, Israel had invaded Jenin, along with other Palestinian towns and refugee camps, and succeeded in crushing armed resistance for years to come.
This time around, the Israeli invasion merely ignited a broader rebellion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, creating a further schism in the already deteriorating relationship between Palestinians, on the one hand, and Abbas and his PA, on the other.
Indeed, just days after Israel concluded its attack on the camp, Abbas emerged with thousands of his soldiers to warn the bereaved refugees that “the hand that will break the unity of the people .. will be cut off from its arm”.
Yet, as the popular rebellion continued to build momentum in the West Bank, Israeli intelligence reports started talking about a plan composed by the deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau, Saleh Arouri, to ignite an armed Intifada.
The solution, according to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, citing official Israeli sources, was to kill Arouri.
Indeed, Israel’s attention and counterstrategy were focused intently on the West Bank, as Hamas, in Gaza at the time, in Israel’s viewpoint, seemed disinterested in an all-out confrontation.
But why did Israel reach such a conclusion?
Miscalculation
Several significant events, the kind that would have pushed Hamas to retaliate, have taken place without any severe armed response by the Resistance in Gaza.
Last December, Israel had sworn in its most right-wing government in history. Far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich arrived on the political scene with the declared objectives of annexing the West Bank, imposing military control over Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Palestinian Muslim and Christian holy sites and, in the case of Smotrich, denying the very existence of the Palestinian people.
Their pledges were quickly translated into action under the leadership of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ben-Gvir was keen on sending a message to his constituency that the seizure of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israel had become imminent.
He repeatedly raided or ordered raids on Al-Aqsa at an unprecedented frequency. The most violent and humiliating of these raids occurred on April 4, when worshippers were beaten up by soldiers while praying inside the mosque during the holy month of Ramadan.
Resistance groups in Gaza threatened retaliation. Several rockets were fired from Gaza toward Israel, merely serving as a symbolic reminder that Palestinians are united, regardless of where they are in the geographic map of historic Palestine.
Israel, however, ignored the message and used the Palestinian threats of retaliation and the occasional ‘lone-wolf attacks’ – like that of Muhannad al-Mazaraa at the illegal Maale Adumim settlement – as political capital to ignite the religious fervor of Israeli society.
Not even the death of Palestinian political prisoner Khader Adnan on May 2 seemed to have shifted Hamas’ position. Some even suggested that there is a rift between Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad following Adnan’s death as a result of a hunger strike in the Ramleh Prison.
On the same day, the PIJ fired rockets into Israel, as Adnan was one of its most prominent members. Israel answered by attacking hundreds of targets inside Gaza, mostly civilian homes and infrastructure, which resulted in the death of 33 Palestinians and the wounding of 147 more.
A truce was declared on May 13, again with no direct Hamas participation, giving further reassurance to Israel that its bloody onslaught on the Strip had achieved more than a military purpose – often referred to as ‘mowing the lawn’ – but a political one, as well.
Israel’s strategic estimation, however, proved to be wrong, as attested by Hamas’ well-coordinated October 7 attacks in southern Israel, targeting numerous military bases, settlements and other strategic positions.
But was Hamas being deceptive? Hiding its actual strategic objectives in anticipation of that significant event?
‘Roaring Flood’
A quick examination of Hamas’ recent statements and political discourse demonstrates that the Palestinian group was hardly secretive about its future actions.
Two weeks before 2023 commenced, at a Gaza rally on December 14, Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, had a message for Israel: “We will come to you in a roaring flood. We will come to you with endless rockets; we will come to you in a limitless flood of soldiers … like the repeating tide.”
The immediate response to the Hamas’ attack was the predictable US-Western solidarity with Israel, calls for revenge, the destruction and annihilation of Gaza and the revitalized plans of displacing Palestinians out of Gaza into Egypt – in fact, out of the West Bank as well, into Jordan.
The Israeli war on the Strip, also starting on October 7, has resulted in unprecedented casualties compared to all Israeli wars on Gaza, in fact, on Palestinians during any time in modern history.
Quickly, the term ‘genocide’ was being used, initially by intellectuals and activists and eventually by international law experts.
“Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed,” associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University, Raz Segal, wrote on October 13 in an article entitled ‘A Textbook Case of Genocide.’
Despite this, the UN could do nothing. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on November 8 that the UN has “neither money nor power” to prevent a potential genocide in Gaza.
In essence, this effectively meant the disabling of the international legal and political systems, as every attempt by the Security Council to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire has been blocked by the US and Israel’s other Western allies.
As the death toll mounted among a starving population in Gaza – all food deprived per the November 28 estimation of the World Food Program – Palestinians resisted throughout the Gaza Strip.
Their resistance was not only confined to attacking or ambushing invading Israeli soldiers but was predicated on the legendary steadfastness of a population that refused to be weakened or displaced.
Sumud
This sumud (steadfast perseverance) continued, even when Israel began to systematically attack hospitals, schools, and every place that, in times of war, is seen as ‘safe places’ for a beleaguered civilian population.
Indeed, on December 3, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said that “there is no safe place in Gaza.” This phrase was repeated often by other UN officials, along with other phrases such as “Gaza has become a graveyard for children,” as first noted by UNICEF Spokesperson James Elder on October 31. This left Guterres with no other option but to, on December 6, invoke article 99, which allows the Secretary-General to “bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”
Israeli violence and Palestinian sumud also extended to the West Bank as well. Aware of the potential for armed resistance in the West Bank, the Israeli army quickly launched major, deadly raids on countless Palestinian towns, villages, and refugee camps, killing hundreds, injuring thousands, and arresting thousands more.
But Gaza remained the epicenter of the Israeli genocide. Aside from a brief humanitarian truce from November 24 to December 1, coupled with few prisoner exchanges, the battle for Gaza -for the future of Palestine and the Palestinian people – continues at an unparalleled price of death and destruction.
Palestinians know full well that the current fight will either mean a new Nakba, like the ethnic cleansing of 1948, or the beginning of the reversal of that very Nakba – as in the process of liberating the Palestinian people from the yoke of Israeli colonialism.
While Israel is determined to end Palestinian Resistance once and for all, it is evident that the Palestinian people’s determination to win their freedom in the coming years is far greater.
Feature photo | Palestinians burn tires and wave the national flag during a protest against an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin, along the border fence with Israel, in east of Gaza City, June 19, 2023. Fatima Shbair | AP
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
The post The Spark That Lit the Fire: The Untold Story of the October 7 Attacks appeared first on MintPress News.
Police charge Palestine Solidarity activist for backing legal right to resist occupation
Mick Napier charged with ‘support for proscribed organization’ under Terrorism Act as Establishment attempt to suppress solidarity with Palestine continues
Palestine Solidarity Activist Mick Napier, a founder of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has been charged under anti-terror legislation after giving a speech in Glasgow in which he said:
I agree with the Palestinian right to resist by means that they choose.
Napier has been charged under the Terrorism Act with supporting a ‘proscribed organisation’. He also thanked Hamas for ‘breaking out of the Gaza concentration camp’. He was arrested at the demo, shortly afterward. According to Electronic Intifada, police officers told Napier that he was being arrested for ‘religiously aggravated’ offences.
Hamas was made a proscribed organisation by the UK government on the basis of its rocket attacks on Israel – but is not listed as a terror group by the United Nations and the UN defeated an attempted 2020 US resolution condemning the group for its rocket attacks. It is widely recognised that the right to resist occupation is protected under international law as part of the human right of self-determination, including the use of force consistent with the UN charter. It appears the UK Establishment is applying the Terrorism Act in a way inconsistent with international law.
Napier is not the only human rights advocate targeted by police. As Skwawkbox exclusively reported, Brighton-based Tony Greenstein was arrested earlier this week and suffered the confiscation of his electronics, for a single tweet, after what is believed to have been a complaint from a right-wing pro-Israel group. He was released without charge on police bail, but under a series of draconian bail conditions that attack his freedom of speech as well as his privacy.
Mick Napier was released on bail under similarly draconian conditions banning him from attending any protest in Scotland and from entering the centre of Glasgow. He pleaded not guilty to all five charges and is due to appear in court 9 January. PSC Scotland – a separate organisation from the English PSC – has said it will give him full support.
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Video: designer and actor use fashion show to call for peace for all Palestinians
Emraan Rajput and Ahsan Khan demand peace ‘for every child for every home’
Fashion designer Emraan Rajput and actor Ahsan Khan have used Khan’s appearance in Rajput’s Pantene Bridal Couture Week fashion show to call for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Khan held a placard, as he walked along the catwalk, demanding “FOR EVERY CHILD FOR EVERY HOME PEACE FOR PALESTINE:
Israel is losing the propaganda war, with its attempts to excuse its war crimes a shambles, the news that it killed hundreds of Israelis during the 7 October Hamas raid percolating globally despite the best efforts of the regime and its political and media allies, and millions marching every week around the world to demand a ceasefire, a lasting peace, and justice. Some Israeli analysts are even saying it is losing its whole assault on the innocents of Gaza, as the occupation and its armed forces try to hide the reality of their losses.
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