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Is the Israeli account completely to be trusted? That would be rare in the fog of war.
This blog post by left-wing journalist Jonathan Cook explains what we know and suggests very many of the dead were Israeli soldiers killed by other Israeli soldiers.
The Western media display the sublime lack of curiosity about this which is their hallmark.
From Mr Cook's latest article in Middle East Eye:
As Israeli forces began making limited ground incursions into northern Gaza over the weekend, reports proliferated that Israel was readying plans to expel much or all of the enclave’s population into the neighbouring Egyptian territory of Sinai.
In part, those fears were fuelled by a report last week, published in the Israeli outlet Calcalist, of a leaked policy draft from the intelligence ministry outlining just such an ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza.
Further concerns were raised by a report in the Financial Times on Monday that Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had lobbied the European Union on the idea of driving the strip’s Palestinians into Sinai under cover of war.
Some EU members, including the Czech Republic and Austria, were said to have been receptive and floated the idea at a meeting of member states last week. An unnamed European diplomat told the FT: "Now is the time to put increased pressure on the Egyptians to agree."
According to the leaked Israeli intelligence ministry document, after their expulsion, Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians would initially be housed in tent cities, before permanent communities could be built in the peninsula’s north.
A military “sterile zone”, several kilometres wide, would prevent any return to Gaza. Longer term, Israel would encourage other states - especially Canada, European countries such as Greece and Spain, and North African countries - to absorb the Palestinian population in Sinai.
What is happening in Gaza is terrible beyond words but does not affect the interests of any European country or the UK. An Israeli plan to move Gazans to Europe does.
Arab governments have resisted absorbing Palestinians for decades, and certainly no European government will consent to it either.
ReplyDeleteI think you are wrong.
DeleteUrsula von Leyden is very anti-Palestine. The Scholz government is chafing against refugees and AFD is nipping at Olaf’s heels. It would be political suicide to admit Palestinians en masse to Germany and other European nations at this time.
DeleteThe UNHCR gives refugees fleeing well grounded fear of persecution the right to stay in European countries - other countries like Turkey only sign up to taking in refugees from Europe as the UK did until 1967. EU countries cannot resile from the UNHCR unless the EU does - the UK can now but will she?
DeleteThere IS now evidence that at least one woman was raped by Hamas men and probably others were too, according to Israeli newspapers Haaretz and Maariv yesterday. From todays 'Daily Telegraph'.
ReplyDelete'One female survivor of the attack at the music festival near the Gaza border has given testimony, saying while she was hiding from the terrorists she saw a young woman gang raped and murdered.
'“As I was hiding, I could see in the corner of my eye that a [gunman] was raping her,” the woman was quoted as saying.
'The survivor reportedly testified that other gunmen also appeared to have raped the victim and later shot her in the head, then mutilated her body.
'Another witness who was hiding in the same area but did not see the rape reportedly informed the investigators that he was told about the incident by the surviving woman as it happened.
'Previous accusations of rape by Hamas fighters came from emergency responders of the Zaka group who collected the bodies from the ransacked kibbutzim and the site of the festival. Some of the responders said that they saw the naked bodies of dead women that showed signs of abuse.
'Israeli authorities are believed to be holding hundreds of suspects involved in the Hamas attack.
'The Israeli authorities previously did not officially report any instances of rape but several women taken hostage by Hamas on Oct 7, some of them partygoers captured at the festival, were paraded naked in the streets of Gaza.'
What the f--k do you want, Paul? A private screening? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearing_Witness_(2023_film)
ReplyDeleteI had not heard about this film. I am shocked that people are objecting to it being shown.
DeleteIn case you missed the significance of the bit about taking the victims' phones - they used these to phone their families and tell them what they were doing, e.g. raping an eight-year-old girl and phoning her father. That's why the father whose little 8-year-old girl was supposed dead expressed himself happy that she was dead, not in the hands of Hamas. Then it turned out she IS in the hands of Hamas. I don't know whether the Israelis have finished, even now, identifying the bodies - the people who were burned (alive, mark you - oh, and of course, the baby cooked in an oven) can sometimes only be identified by their DNA. This stuff is traumatic even to know, and it only trickled out via pro-Israel commentators in western countries. You wouldn't hear it from the BBC. Douglas Murray rightly says that Hamas are WORSE than the Nazis - at least the Nazis knew what they were doing was inhuman and they tried to conceal it. Hamas recorded it and shared it proudly with their Mums.
DeleteI completely condemn the attacks by Hamas on civilians.
DeleteYour question is my question! Despite the long list of diplomatic circumstances, I doubt the motives were fully of this world, and the reminder will not be intelligible in any other terms. The response anticipates such motivations -
ReplyDeletehttps://x.com/IsraeliPM_heb/status/1712909213763018908?s=20
["May God grant that our enemies rise up against us and strike before us."]
Very good point and very good research. You are right about other worldly motives on both sides, though al Qaeda and ISIS did approve of Hamas for being secular and not introducing sharia law. Why are Christians not passionate like Muslims about their beliefs? Instead we live in a world where criticism of all sorts of sins that 60 years ago were abhorred is now not permitted.
DeleteI do not quite care to understand what the various factions say they are fighting for; I appreciate their thwarting each other. It is not easy to keep in mind that none of these do represent Islam, since nobody does.y
DeleteI sure know what my kin fight for.
DeleteI think Netanyahu is more likely/able to assert himself over Biden than vice versa. The war has damaged America’s standing in much of the world. I spent two decades listening to Russians argue that morality is to foreign policy what paint is to the exterior of a building. Happy 2024!
ReplyDelete