IDF
Even BBC admits Israel lied about slaughter of starving Palestinians gathered for aid
Broadcaster’s ‘Verify’ analysis concludes the obvious
Even the BBC – usually the epitome of ‘both-sidesing’ and the minimisation of Palestinian deaths and suffering – has had to conclude that Israel lied when it claimed that it did not slaughter well over a hundred desperate Palestinians and wound as many as a thousand more who were gathered in a street waiting for an aid delivery.
BBC Verify says it “examined social media videos, satellite imagery and IDF drone footage to piece together what we know… about what happened” – and it concluded:
We have examined exclusive Al Jazeera video filmed close to that second location at the rear of the convoy, about half a kilometre south of the roundabout.
Volleys of gunfire can be heard and people are seen scrambling over lorries and ducking behind the vehicles. Red tracer rounds can be seen in the sky.
Mahmoud Awadeyah said the Israeli vehicles had started firing at people when the aid arrived.
“Israelis purposefully fired at the men… they were trying to get near the trucks that had the flour,” he said. “They were fired at directly and prevented people to come near those killed.”
…There have been reports of casualties being taken to several hospitals.
Dr Mohamed Salha, interim hospital manager at al-Awda hospital, where many of the dead and injured were taken, told the BBC: “Al-Awda hospital received around 176 injured people…142 of these cases are bullet injuries and the rest are from the stampede and broken limbs in the upper and lower body parts.
Israel has claimed that a ‘mob’ – otherwise known as desperate civilians starving because of Israel’s blockade of food, water, fuel and medical supplies – stampeded and attacked the aid convoy, but Israel’s own drone footage shows that this did not happen and any ‘stampede’ was caused by the Israeli gun and tank fire, despite the IDF editing out at least three sections of the video that can be taken to show the Israeli troops’ attacks.
A still from the IDF’s drone footage, which shows people gathered but not attacking or stampeding until troops started firing
Israel also contradicted itself, with various spokespeople saying the Israeli soldiers did not fire at all, that they fired ‘warning shots’ and that they ‘only’ shot at the legs of the crowd.
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Well over 100 civilians murdered as Israeli tanks, gunboats fire on crowd waiting for aid delivery
Terror and chaos in Gaza City after IDF ‘trap’
Injured wait on lorries and a donkey cart (social media image)
More than a hundred Palestinian civilians have been slaughtered and many more injured, after Israeli tanks, gunboats and armoured vehicles opened fire on a crowd of people waiting for a scheduled aid delivery to arrive. The Israeli military has admitted opening fire, claiming that troops felt ‘endangered’. The IDF also tried to blame the civilians for their own deaths, saying some were trampled – presumably as terrified people tried to escape the fire zone.
Some reports have put the death toll at 170, with more than a thousand wounded. Social media posts show the carnage and the attempts to evacuate the injured. The Al Jazeera news service reported that the victims had fallen into a ‘trap’ set by the Israeli military:
Palestinians who witnessed the Israeli attack on aid seekers in Gaza city say it was a trap.
According to human rights group Euro-Med Monitor, Israeli forces have killed almost 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza since 7 October last year, the vast majority of them civilians and a large majority women and children, and have wounded more than 70,000 others, many of them severely. The World Health Organization and others have reported that more than a million people are in, or at imminent risk of, starvation because of Israel’s blockade and military assault, and victims of starvation have already died.
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Met confirms arrest of Gaza protester at Thornberry’s office
Outrage among activists at anti-genocide protest
The Metropolitan Police Service has confirmed the arrest of a protester on Monday night at what outraged other protesters have said was a lively but entirely peaceful protest, outside the Islington office of Shadow Attorney Emily Thornberry, against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the Labour regime’s support for it.
A Met spokesperson told Skwawkbox that a woman had been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred and bailed ‘pending further investigations’:
A small demonstration was held in Islington High Street during the evening of Monday, 26 February. A woman was arrested at the scene on suspicion of inciting racial hatred. She was taken into custody and later released on bail pending further enquiries. Next due on a date in April.
Protesters against genocide and for the human rights of Palestinians have been demonised by politicians and supporters of Israel for supposed ‘hate speech’ since Israel’s slaughter of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank accelerated after the Hamas raid and the Israel military’s well-known – but ignored by the UK ‘mainstream’ media and politicians – killing of ‘immense’ numbers of its own citizens. The Tory government, aided by ‘opposition leader’ Keir Starmer, have continued to attack the civil rights of the UK people to protest.
Right-wing MPs, along with pro-Israel campaigners, continue to call for tougher police action against demonstrators, despite the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of protests.
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NYT ‘journalist’ who co-wrote ‘Hamas rape’ piece is IDF propagandist with ‘no journalism experience’
Anat Schwartz found to have liked racist and violent posts about Palestinians
Image: Wikipedia
A huge scandal has broken out in the US after the New York Times (NYT), one of the United States’ leading newspapers, was found to have run a major front-page story smearing Palestinian resistance fighters as using ‘systematic’ use of sexual violence co-written by an Israeli film-maker with no journalism background who served as a in Israeli military intelligence – and had ‘liked’ social media posts featuring racism and violence toward Palestinians.
Anat Schwartz co-wrote the already-discredited article titled ‘Screams without words’, which made lurid, unevidenced claims about rape and mutilation by Palestinians during the 7 October raid – claims that have already been furiously denied by the family of the victim who took up around a third of the piece, who further claimed that the authors had misled them about the purpose of their article and never mentioned supposed the rape of their daughter, which they say did not take place and for which there is no evidence.
Scrutiny of Schwartz’s record revealed shocking facts about her background and that of her second co-author, who is her nephew by marriage:
Quick bio I found: pic.twitter.com/WWMZqRh1py
— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
Now let's get to her co-author, who also didn't write beforehand Oct 2023… pic.twitter.com/x9gkZwIlv7
— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
It is her nephew!
This is a post from her husband. pic.twitter.com/Sgtz4B6wlL— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
Lead author Jeffrey Gettelman fares little better under scrutiny:
He admitted to it. pic.twitter.com/zibbbEby31
— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
Schwartz, for her part, Schwartz reportedly ‘liked’ a post that talked about turning Gaza ‘into a slaughterhouse’ including the summary execution of prisoners and ‘violat[ing] any norm’:
Schwartz also ‘liked’ a post about the quickly-debunked ’40 beheaded babies’ claim – and the woman who took the photo of the ‘woman in the black dress’ that the article claimed falsely had been raped, said that the NYT’s authors had told her they needed to speak to her because it was ‘important for Israeli advocacy’, not for accurate journalism:
Lead author Gettelman said it was ‘not his job to gather evidence’ for the claims his article made:
Mondoweiss reported that Schwartz had served in Israeli military intelligence. The NYT has ‘launched an investigation’ and the paper’s staff are said to be split, with many outraged at the abandonment of journalistic standards.
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Starmer ‘ordering MPs to abstain’ again on SNP Gaza ceasefire motion
Cowardly Labour leader helped out by Speaker after alleged threat but will still betray Palestinians facing genocide
Keir Starmer is set – again – to order MPs to abstain on the SNP’s motion condemning Israeli war crimes and calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, after Speaker Lindsay Hoyle helped him out by ignoring parliamentary convention.
Hoyle should normally have ruled out Starmer’s weasel-worded amendment to the SNP motion after the Tories tabled their own amendment, but has allowed Labour’s to go forward too, after alleged threats by Starmer and his team to try to remove Hoyle as Speaker if he declined:
Tory MPs claim Starmer & Labour chief whip Sir Alan Campbell threatened during behind the scenes talks to attempt to remove Sir Lindsay Hoyle as Speaker if he didn’t select Labour amendment. Now Hoyle is facing Tory fury.
— Jon Craig (@joncraig) February 21, 2024
Labour’s motion, which makes the situation more about the rights and feelings of Israelis and their apartheid regime instead of the war crimes and slaughter of civilians being perpetrated by their government and military, is unfit, but voting for that will allow Starmer and co to tell voters they have voted for a ceasefire, even when in reality it is nothing more than a regurgitated ‘humanitarian pause’ favouring Israel’s agenda.
Few will be fooled, but Starmer will as usual have the collusion of the mainstream media to push the scam – unless enough Labour MPs rebel to vote for the SNP motion after Labour’s is defeated.
Update: SNP Westminster leader has said his MPs will back Starmer’s feeble amendment:
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Starmer tries to make SNP Gaza ceasefire motion all about Israel’s feelings
Labour amendments betray Gaza’s murdered and oppressed civilians and uses classic asymmetric language to value Palestinian life less than Israeli
Keir Starmer – after days of posing to try to bring Muslim and other decent voters onside by mouthing ceasefire language – has yet again betrayed the two million people in Gaza suffering violence and starvation and the more than 100,000 people murdered and maimed by Israel.
While the ‘mainstream’ media speculated whether Starmer would order MPs to support the SNP’s motion demanding a ceasefire, which is being debated in Parliament tomorrow, more realistic observers knew it was inevitable that Starmer would do the minimum he hopes will fool voters opposed to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while protecting the interests of the pro-Israel right.
And so he did: Labour has tabled amendments to the original motion that gut it of its impact and has gone as far as making the motion more about Hamas’s supposed guilt and the feelings of Israel and its supporters. And the amendment uses the classic tactics of politicians and ‘mainstream’ media to present Israeli lives and suffering as more valuable than Palestinian.
In Starmer’s worldview, Palestinians are not being murdered by Israel – their lives are just ‘lost’, as if to a natural disaster and not to a campaign of mechanised mass murder. The sheer number of their deaths is presented as ‘intolerable’, but the loss of Israeli lives to Palestinian resistance is ‘horror’. Israelis have the ‘right to assurance’ against attack, but there is no mention of a Palestinian right not to be murdered by the occupation regime. Israel ‘cannot be expected’ to stop fighting if Hamas does not stop – but there is no acknowledgement that Hamas’s violence takes place against a backdrop of decades of wanton violence and oppression by the occupiers. Israel must be ‘safe and secure’ – but a Palestinian state only merits ‘viable’.
The SNP motion is an exemplar of directness and simplicity and rightly focuses on the many tens of thousands of civilians slaughtered by Israel, as well as on the forced displacement of 1.5 million Palestinians into Rafah, where they remain under constant bombardment and the threat of an all-out ground assault:
Labour’s lickspittle version calls resistance ‘terrorism’ but does not mention the Israeli terror state’s genocide and other war crimes, or the fact that so many are dying in Rafah because they were forced to cram there under bomb and bullet – and clearly hasn’t even been proofread, calling for ‘the UN Security Council to be meet urgently’:
Starmer is trying to mask his support for Israel’s war crimes and hoping that the millions in this country disgusted by that support will be fooled. His disregard for the true plight of Palestinians and his complicity in the war crimes being perpetrated against them by Israel is beyond contemptible.
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UN human rights office ‘appalled’ at rape and execution of women and girls in Gaza
‘Credible’ reports of war crimes against Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers detailed in UN OHCHR statement – yet ignored by western ‘msm’
The horrific treatment of women and girls by Israeli soldiers – including rape and execution – has been condemned by the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights in a damning statement today from the ‘Special Procedures’ group of human rights experts, saying that the actions of the IDF are likely to amount to prosecutable war crimes.
The statement says that the group:
expressed alarm over credible allegations of egregious human rights violations to which Palestinian women and girls continue to be subjected in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Palestinian women and girls have reportedly been arbitrarily executed in Gaza, often together with family members, including their children, according to information received.
“We are shocked by reports of the deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought refuge, or while fleeing. Some of them were reportedly holding white pieces of cloth when they were killed by the Israeli army or affiliated forces,” the experts said.
The experts expressed serious concern about the arbitrary detention of hundreds of Palestinian women and girls, including human rights defenders, journalists and humanitarian workers, in Gaza and the West Bank since 7 October. Many have reportedly been subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, denied menstruation pads, food and medicine, and severely beaten. On at least one occasion, Palestinian women detained in Gaza were allegedly kept in a cage in the rain and cold, without food.
“We are particularly distressed by reports that Palestinian women and girls in detention have also been subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers. At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence,” the experts said. They also noted that photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances were also reportedly taken by the Israeli army and uploaded online.
The experts expressed concern that an unknown number of Palestinian women and children, including girls, have reportedly gone missing after contact with the Israeli army in Gaza. “There are disturbing reports of at least one female infant forcibly transferred by the Israeli army into Israel, and of children being separated from their parents, whose whereabouts remain unknown,” they said.
“We remind the Government of Israel of its obligation to uphold the right to life, safety, health, and dignity of Palestinian women and girls and to ensure that no one is subjected to violence, torture, ill-treatment or degrading treatment, including sexual violence,” the experts said.
They called for an independent, impartial, prompt, thorough and effective investigation into the allegations and for Israel to cooperate with such investigations.
“Taken together, these alleged acts may constitute grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, and amount to serious crimes under international criminal law that could be prosecuted under the Rome Statute,” the experts said. “Those responsible for these apparent crimes must be held accountable and victims and their families are entitled to full redress and justice,
While Israel’s atrocity propaganda claiming ‘systematic’ use of rape as a weapon of war have been characterised by an absence of evidence and a demand to be believed regardless how lurid and unfeasible the claims have been, and have quickly collapsed under scrutiny – yet have been propagated by western media and governments anyway – the UN experts’ sober claims carry weight and a call for serious investigation, but has been entirely ignored so far by the UK and US ‘mainstream’ media:
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Video: Palestinian ambassador breaks down as he tells ICJ of plight of children under occupation
Court hearing evidence of effects of Israel’s illegal occupation
Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour broke down today near the close of his presentation to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as he spoke of the effects of Israel’s illegal occupation in Palestine on his nation’s children and on the human rights of its people. The hearing is being televised live by Al Jazeera English:
The court is hearing evidence from over fifty countries about the illegal occupation. Earlier, Mansour and others had spoke of the 1948 Nakba, in which almost 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes with many massacred, and the world’s decades-long indifference – and of the impacts of Israel’s current genocidal campaign in Gaza.
As Mansour spoke, UK news channels covered a variety of items but did not stream the court hearing. In January, the ICJ put Israel formally on trial for genocide and ordered the apartheid regime to protect Palestinian lives. The slaughter of civilians continues unabated.
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New ‘Lab’ MP Egan married to former 8200 Unit Israeli ‘spy’ recruiter
Right-wing MP’s partner spoke of his ‘great experience’ on pro-Israel propaganda programme, to which he recruited former spies from unit that marks its headsets for every Palestinian it kills
New right-wing Labour MP Damien Egan is married to a former IDF soldier who recruited former members of the IDF’s ‘Unit 8200’ spy unit to the ‘Excel’ propaganda programme run by the ultra-Zionist ‘Birthright Israel’ group (BI).
In a 2017 Facebook post, BI boasted of Felberbaum’s ‘important role’ in recruiting ex-8200 supervisors for ‘Excel’ interns, which Felberbaum said was ‘a great experience for me’, before talking of the ‘technological world I come from’. The article does not say that Felberbaum was a Unit 8200 member during his service, although his role recruiting former members raises the question:
Unit 8200 is the IDF’s ‘cyber-spy’ unit. Whistleblowers from the unit have revealed that members sometimes wear ‘X’s on their headsets to mark assassinations their information has facilitated – and that it targeted Palestinians for extortion and blackmail to further the government’s aims.
‘Excel’ is BI’s vehicle for taking US Jews on trips to Israel to reinforce their commitment to the occupying regime. In 2006, BI’s director of marketing said that:
[Israel] should be an integral part of every Jew’s identity
and criticised left-wing Jews who used the programme’s funding to go to help in Palestine, whom he said were weeded out if their ‘hidden agenda’ identified before going:
It is taking advantage of the Jewish money that sends people to Israel, exploiting this money to promote an agenda which is not the agenda of the people who funded Taglit
Felberbaum is not the only connection between Unit 8200 and Keir Starmer’s Labour. Starmer employs former member Assaf Kaplan as his ‘Social Listening and Organising Manager’, believed to be involved in monitoring members’ and others’ ‘online conversations’ about the party – and potentially finding information that can be used to expel anyone at odds with the regime. Kaplan removed mentions of the unit from his online profiles. He was also a ‘Facebook friend’ of disgraced Israeli embassy employee Shai Masot, who was sent home from the UK after being exposed organising campaigns against MPs Israel considered troublesome.
Egan himself is a member of the right-wing so-called ‘Jewish Labour Movement’. Unit 8200 has reportedly targeted gay Palestinians for blackmail and coercion.
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Israel’s UNRWA ‘tunnel’ smear collapses as ‘Hamas’ gear revealed as solar power kit
Yet another risible propaganda video falls apart almost as soon as it’s published – but ‘mainstream’ media parrot lies without checking
Israel’s appalling – and woefully inept – propaganda has been exposed again after the Israeli military showed reporters around what it claimed was a ‘Hamas tunnel’ under the Gaza HQ of UN aid agency UNRWA.
A video published by Fox News of the tour revealed green boxes on the walls of the supposed ‘tunnel’ – but as former diplomat Craig Murray pointed out, the boxes are not supposed ‘terror’ equipment. Instead, they are solar power converters kept in a cellar to keep them cool as they process energy from solar panels above – and the wires leading from them into the UNRWA building were there to send the converted electricity up into the HQ, as you’d expect:
Despite the ease of checking what the IDF claimed – and the IDF’s long record of ridiculous lies and smears – the so-called ‘mainstream’ media have tamely parroted the lie:
Israel’s attempts at propaganda have routinely been exposed almost as soon as they were uttered – from claims that five hundred refugees sheltering at the Al Ahli hospital were killed by a Hamas rocket, to lurid atrocity propaganda about beheaded babies and severed breasts, to the burned bodies supposedly murdered by Hamas in the 7 October raid that were killed by Israeli military missiles, shells and bullets, and everything in between.
Just as routinely, western governments and media continue to regurgitate the lies without fact-checking, or just as likely in full knowledge that they are lies – and stubbornly ignore even the Israeli military’s admission that it killed ‘immense’ numbers of Israelis during the Hamas raid, despite this being freely discussed by Israeli media.
Israel has long wanted the end of UNRWA for the organisation’s support for Palestinians’ right of return to lands stolen from them. The arrogance that seems to underpin the lazy shoddiness of Israel’s propaganda attempts shows no sign of abating.
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