Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!

3D models of Iranian missiles and a drone are being placed under an anti-Israeli placard in the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque in downtown Tehran, Iran, March 27, 2024 © Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto via Getty Images

The promised Iranian retaliation for the Israeli attack on Tehran’s consulate in Damascus is likely in the next 24-48 hours, anonymous US officials told Bloomberg on Wednesday.

Two generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force were killed in the Israeli airstrike on April 1, which, for the first time, targeted an internationally protected diplomatic mission.

There has been a widespread expectation that Iran would refrain from reprisal until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Speaking on Wednesday, as Muslims celebrated the feast of Eid-al-Fitr, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Israel “must and shall be punished” for what it did.

               “Major missile or drone strikes” are now imminent, Bloomberg reported, citing “people familiar with” the Israeli, US, and allied intelligence reports.

They will likely be carried out by either Iran directly or its allies, such as the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, the anonymous sources said.

The sources said the US is helping Israel plan and share intelligence assessments. West Jerusalem is reportedly waiting for the Iranian attack before it launches a ground offensive against the city of Rafah in Gaza.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that West Jerusalem would respond in kind if the attack on Israel came from Iranian territory. Several media outlets reported on Tuesday that Israel has been preparing to target Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The US has publicly promised Israel support against an Iranian attack, including helping shoot down the incoming missiles. Washington has reportedly also floated the idea of taking part in any Israeli counter-strikes.

“We do not rule out launching joint retaliatory strikes with Israel if Iran or its agents attack it,” an unnamed US official told Al Jazeera Arabic.

Meanwhile, Lufthansa has announced that it suspended service to and from Tehran “due to the current situation in the Middle East.” The German national carrier said that flights might resume on Wednesday after April 11. Rumors that the airspace over Iran’s Khuzestan province – on the southwestern border with Iraq – has been closed could not be independently confirmed.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have canceled all leave and began spoofing GPS signals in preparation for a possible Iranian reprisal. Rumors of the impending Iranian strike also drove up the price of oil in future markets, with Brent crude trading above $90 a barrel.

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Editor’s Note | Oil Embargo! Liquid Gold! Intense Clout!

Armageddon is out of the question. Expect an oil embargo. It hits where it hurts the most. It will pave the way to negotiate peace with Israel’s 400 million neighbors. Israel must decide whether to continue being cannon fodder to die for EU-US/NATO interests or to become a good neighbor in the Region. If Israel desires to become a member of the Community of Nations, it must break out of its ghetto mentality and its dependence on the EU-US/NATO Axis.

The indigenous Palestinians are more Israelite or Semitic (from the semen (seeds) of the biblical Abraham) than the Jews who wandered in from Eastern Europe, most of whom descended from pagan converts into Judaism. They left Judaea 1,900 years ago. By marrying pagan converts, they diluted their genetic bloodlines to Abraham. The Jews from Eastern Europe are more Eastern European as opposed to their Palestinian cousins – referred to in the Hebrew and Christian Bible as half-breeds and the remnants of Israel – who intermarried with others in the region. After 600 CE, many converted to Islam. A significant segment of the remnants of Israel and half-breeds remained Jewish or Christian. Most indigenous Palestinians are not purebred Arabs. About all are admixtures of all who lived in Palestine, especially the Hebrew Israelites.

Moreover, all Arabs consider Abraham their Patriarch. They are Semitic. They are also begotten from the seeds (semen) of the biblical Abraham, the “father of a multitude of nations.” Ironically, the former Judeans from afar are less Semitic than the local Arabs. Plus, sixty-five percent of the Jews are no longer ‘Jewish.’ They no longer observe Judaism nor believe in God. Yet, they covet a Promised Land.

It is time that Israel becomes a nation with an Israeli nationality. The Israeli nationality is non-existent, an oxymoron. Israel does not offer its Israeli citizens the Israeli nationality. The Europeans –‘Jews’— who colonize the land believe their new nation-state is for ‘Jews only.’ Does that include Jews who are no longer Jewish? It doesn’t make sense to create a theocracy if the majority rejects God.

The solution: a one-state democracy, a beloved community for all!

Israel, become neighborly! Trust your instincts! Your future is neither in Europe, North America, South Africa, or Asia. That’s where you’re from. Your future is among your neighbors in the Middle East. That’s where you belong. That’s where you’re going, your destiny.

The Sacred Texts of our Abrahamic Faiths introduces our “Good Neighbor.” It’s the “Good Samaritan,” the Good Palestinian, the half-breeds, the remnants of Israel, your neighbors.

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‘NO EVIDENCE OF GENOCIDE’ IN GAZA – PENTAGON CHIEF

Lloyd Austin said the US remains “committed” to funding Israel, denying mounting accusations of genocide

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on April 09, 2024, in Washington, DC. © Getty Images / Chip Somodevilla / Staff

Editorial Staff
HomeWorld News
9 April 2024

The United States does not have any evidence that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza as it carries out its war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said.

Israel declared war on Hamas last October after a surprise and deadly cross-border raid staged by the militant group, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage. The subsequent Israeli bombing and ground operation in Gaza has killed at least 33,000 people, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.

Austin, who was delivering opening remarks on the Pentagon’s 2025 budget request, was interrupted twice by anti-Israeli protesters who made it into the hearing room on Capitol Hill, demanding that the US “stop funding Israel” and supporting a “genocide” in Gaza. The demonstrators paused the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing while police removed them from the room.

Asked by Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) if he agreed with the protesters’ claims of genocide, Austin said he did not.

“We don’t have any evidence of genocide,” Austin replied. “I would remind everybody that what happened on October 7 was horrible.”

Last month, UN Human Rights Council special rapporteur Francesca Albanese concluded in a report that there are, in fact, “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met.”

The UN has also warned of further humanitarian “catastrophe” if the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) goes through with a planned ground offensive in Rafah, the last remaining Palestinian shelter in Gaza. On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government had set a date for the offensive to begin.

Although the Biden administration has chastised Israel for not doing enough to protect aid workers and other civilians in Gaza, it has refused to throttle back support for the IDF or to place conditions on weapons shipments.

The Pentagon chief further stated on Tuesday that the US remains “committed” to assisting Israel in “defending its territory and people.”

Last week, media reported that the White House had agreed to provide thousands more bombs to Israel, helping to replenish stockpiles depleted by West Jerusalem’s six-month bombardment of Gaza.

The transfer was finalized hours after news broke that the IDF had killed seven aid workers, including US and UK citizens, in a drone strike targeting a humanitarian aid convoy in the Palestinian enclave. Nearly 200 aid workers have reportedly been killed in Gaza and the West Bank since Israel’s war against Hamas began in October.

OPINION | ‘TRAGIC’ BUT ‘UNINTENTIONAL’: THE MYTH OF HONEST MISTAKES AND THE VALUE OF CIVILIAN LIVES IN GAZA

Respecting the moral value of all civilian lives, as law and morality demand, requires that military forces treat all civilians with the same degree of moral respect and care, no matter which “side” they are on.

(Photo by Yasser Qudih / Xinhua via Getty Images)

By Jessica Wolfendale

ABC Australia
8 April 2024

The killing of seven aid workers from the humanitarian organization World Central Kitchen (WCK) on 1 April 2024 by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) prompted international outrage, drawing strong criticism from President Joe Biden and other world leaders — many of whom, before this event, had expressed concern over civilian deaths in Gaza but continued to support Israel’s actions and provide weapons.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu responded to this international outrage by describing the killings as “tragic” but “unintentional,” going on to state that the killing of non-combatants “happens in war” and that Israel “will do everything to prevent a recurrence.”

Israel’s investigation into the attack blamed the killings on “mistaken identification” and resulted in the dismissal of two officers.

Israel’s response to this attack and the international community’s swift condemnation stands in sharp contrast to the attitude Israel has thus far expressed toward the devastatingly high rates of civilian casualties resulting from the Gaza offensive since the atrocities Hamas committed on Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023. As I write this, 33,700 Palestinians have been killed, and over 1.7 million (or 70 percent of the population) have been displaced.

For example, PM Netanyahu expressed no regret about an Israeli strike on 31 October 2023 that killed 106 civilians (including 54 children). Similarly, neither he nor other Israeli military or political leaders have expressed remorse about the destruction of homes, schools, and hospitals that has occurred over the last six months. Instead, Israel has insisted that the imperative of destroying Hamas justifies their campaign in Gaza.

This discrepancy between Israel’s response to the killing of the seven WCK workers and its ongoing and devastating attacks on Palestinian civilians suggests that Israel regards Palestinian deaths (and the destruction of Palestinian homes) as morally less important than the deaths of the WCK workers, six of whom were foreign citizens. The language used by PM Netanyahu in his response also reflects a war that has arguably contributed to the normalization of high rates of Palestinian civilian casualties. These narratives are that such deaths are unintentional (“mistakes”) and that the killing of non-combatants just “happens in war.”

The Normalization of Civilian Deaths in War

Civilian deaths are inevitable in any conflict. In international humanitarian law, civilian casualties caused by attacks on military targets are legal if those deaths are proportionate to the military advantage gained from the attack and if military forces took feasible steps to minimize foreseeable harm to non-combatants (even at some increased risk to combatants). In practice, however, the law is lenient on military forces that cause disproportionate civilian harm.

In the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, collateral civilian deaths are war crimes only if the perpetrator intentionally launched an attack knowing that it “will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects … which would be excessive about the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated”. This means that military attacks that cause excessive and disproportionate civilian deaths are not war crimes under international law, even if caused by recklessness or negligence.

The assumption that civilian deaths are the inevitable “tragic outcome of war,” along with the leniency in international law toward disproportionate civilian casualties, creates little incentive for military forces to question, let alone investigate, whether any particular incident of collateral civilian deaths could have been avoided. As we have seen in the war in Gaza and other conflicts — like the US drone warfare campaign in Pakistan and elsewhere — such an attitude can lead to a tolerance of disproportionate and excessive civilian deaths.

Interrogating the Claim of “Honest Mistakes”

Combined with the assumption that civilian deaths are inevitable in any war, describing accidental or disproportionate civilian deaths as “unintentional” and the result of individual mistakes tends to divert attention away from intentional institutional policies and procedures that shape choices of targets, methods of target selection, and methods of engagement with targets. This means that the IDF’s targeting policies and practices demonstrate the degree of care they are willing to take to prevent civilian harm, and hence tell us a great deal about their moral evaluation of the civilians who are at risk from IDF attacks.

Consider a recent report that revealed that the IDF uses an AI targeting system known as “Lavender” to select targets for attack. According to this report, this system produced “kill lists” of potential Hamas operatives. These lists were often approved with little oversight despite a known 10 percent error rate. One IDF source claimed:

               “Normally, they would personally devote only about' 20 seconds’ to each target before authorizing a bombing—just to ensure the Lavender-marked target is male.”

Once a target was approved, the IDF would often choose to attack the target when they were in their private home at night, often with their families, effectively guaranteeing a high rate of civilian casualties. According to the sources quoted in the report, this choice was because “it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses.”

The choice to develop and use this AI targeting system, rely on that system’s outputs (despite a known high error rate), and attack targets in their homes at night are all intentional choices. This means that it is not only false but morally misleading to describe the resulting civilian deaths as “unintentional” or as what “happens in war.” Such deaths are the foreseeable and predictable result of these policies and procedures. The choice to use these procedures points not only to a blameworthy indifference to Palestinian lives but to a willingness to put innocent people in harm’s way.

That these procedures suggest indifference to Palestinian lives is evident from the fact that it is almost certain that the IDF would not adopt such tactics if it were Israeli civilians who were at risk from their military actions.

It is perhaps ironic that the killings that have prompted the most significant outrage from the international community are not the thousands of Palestinian deaths resulting from the tactics I’ve described but the deaths of the seven WCK workers who — at least according to Israel’s investigation — were killed due to unintentional error. If Israel’s claim is valid (and some observers are skeptical), then these deaths are an example of the tragic but unintentional civilian deaths that occur in any war. Such deaths warrant remorse and regret, but to publicly declare oneself “outraged and heartbroken” — as President Biden did — by these deaths and not by the killings of innocent Palestinian civilians tacitly devalues Palestinian lives.

To respect the moral value of all civilian lives, as law and morality require, demands not only that military forces treat all civilians with the same degree of moral respect and care, no matter which “side” they are on, but also that all civilian deaths in war are mourned.

Jessica Wolfendale is a Professor of Philosophy at Case Western Reserve University and the co-author (with Matthew Talbert) of War Crimes: Causes, Excuses, and Blame.

Professor Wolfendale discusses proportionality and the ethics of civilian casualties with Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens this week on The Minefield.

What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive? Edited by Abraham A. van Kempen.

THE DEIR YASSIN MASSACRE REMINDS US — EVERY ZIONIST ACCUSATION IS A CONFESSION

Israel is guilty of the same massacres and atrocities it has accused Palestinians of committing on October 7. My family survived one of those massacres in the village of Deir Yassin on this day 76 years ago.

Photo of the author’s late grandmother, Fatima Asad, taken at the 50th commemoration of the massacre in Deir Yassin. This was from the author’s first visit to Deir Yassin in 1998. (Photo courtesy of Dina Elmuti)

CONTENT WARNING |

This article contains graphic descriptions of
rape, gore, and extreme violence.

By Dina Elmuti
Mondoweiss.net
9 April 2024

Like a vicious beast with an insatiable bloodlust, he shot a bullet into her neck and then sliced her abdomen open with the welding knife until it turned into a bloody pulp from the fury of razor-sharp ravaging teeth.

Twenty-year-old Salhiyeh Eid was nine months pregnant. When my grandmother’s 15-year-old cousin, Aisha Radwan, rushed to extricate the unborn infant from Salhiyeh’s eviscerated womb, the terrorist killed her, too.

What began as a picturesque spring morning, with almond trees in full bloom and fig and apricot trees ripening, quickly turned into a merciless bloodbath. The air was thick with the cloying stench of blood flowing through the cobbled streets while bullet-riddled bodies decomposed in the sun. The caustic odor of corpses burning in the village’s stone quarry was unbearable. These are the details narrated to me by the members of my family who experienced them. They are survivors of the Deir Yassin Massacre of 1948.

Earlier that morning, armed members of Zionist terrorist militias, the Stern Gang and the Irgun Zvai Leumi, invaded the pastoral village and slaughtered anyone with a beating pulse. They beheaded babies, burned a child alive in the communal oven, and committed acts of sexual assault and systematic rape.

Zionist Terrorists Slaughtered Nearly 254 Villagers.

If these atrocities appear disturbingly familiar, it’s because these were the same acts that Hamas was falsely accused of committing after October 7, solidifying the notion that “every Zionist accusation is a confession.”

Such atrocities didn’t occur on October 7, 2023. But they did on April 9, 1948, in the village of Deir Yassin, west of Jerusalem.

Accusation in a Mirror

At the heart of Zionism exists a deep-seated desire to eradicate the Palestinian people, and October 7 provided the opportune excuse to accelerate that very aim. Zionists worldwide quickly launched a sinister campaign of atrocity propaganda.

Zionism’s malignantly narcissistic and fundamentally paranoid rely on lies, manipulation, and propaganda functions so that everything that is “bad” is projected outward. They acquitted themselves of guilt by casting their aggression and cruelty as collective self-defense. They justified this genocide through incitement, demonization, and dehumanization — making the genocide appear not only acceptable but necessary.

The atrocity propaganda about October 7 was projected in its most flagrant form, as Zionists imputed to their enemies the exact crimes they had committed in the past and were preparing to repeat in the future.

During the Deir Yassin massacre, Zionist terrorists bayoneted the abdomens of 25 pregnant women, forcibly taking out their unborn fetuses. In contrast, these women were still alive to witness the indescribable horror as they took their last excruciating breaths. They murdered 60 women and girls, mutilated their bodies, butchered nursing babies, and maimed 52 children before decapitating them right before their mothers’ eyes.¹

Zionist terrorists took surviving women and girls in the village, stripped them of their clothes, and paraded them along King George Avenue in the Jewish quarters of Jerusalem, where spectators subjected them to mockery and insults and threw stones at them.²

Safiyeh Attiyeh, who was 41 years old at the time of the massacre, recounted that she saw one man open his pants and leap on her. “I screamed,” she said, “but around me other women were being raped, too. Some men were so anxious to get our earrings that they ripped our ears to get them faster.”³

The day following the massacre, Jacques de Reynier, the Swiss representative of the International Red Cross, led the first party to the site of the massacre and bore witness to the carnage.⁴ On April 14, the British Assistant Inspector General of the Criminal Investigation Division, Richard Catling, visited several homes in the neighboring village of Silwan and collected the testimonies of women who survived the Deir Yassin massacre.

Physical evidence collected through the medical examinations of survivors conducted by a doctor and nurse from the Government Hospital in Jerusalem corroborated these reports. The following is Catling’s account:

               “The majority of those women are timid and reluctant to relate their experiences, especially in matters concerning sexual assault…There is, however, no doubt that the attack committed many sexual atrocities [Zionists]. Many young schoolgirls were raped and later slaughtered. Older women were also molested. One story is current concerning a case in which a young girl was torn into two. Many infants were also butchered and killed.”

A Mossad intelligence officer arrived in Deir Yassin to the sight of the Irgun and Stern Gang members incinerating bodies:

               “We witnessed a most horrible and dreadful scene…. [Irgun] men were throwing Arab corpses into a house from the roof while a huge fire was burning. It was really like a crematorium. Besides that horror, I saw many wood fires along the path on which corpses were burning. The stench in the air was unbearable.”⁵

In 1982, the then-commander of the Haganah, Zvi Ankoi, described the atrocities he witnessed at the scene of the Deir Yassin massacre:

               “I saw cut-off genitalia and women’s crushed stomachs. It was direct murder. Soldiers shot everyone they saw, including women and children. Parents begged commanders to stop the slaughter, to please stop shooting.”⁶

Selective Amnesia

Oppression breeds resistance, yet the world is convinced that resistance emerges from a vacuum on a single day that becomes a historical turning point of grand, irreversible proportions. The amnesic narrative that the clock began ticking on October 7, 2023, permits the prolonged subhuman slaughter of Palestinians.

October 7 is a glimpse at the historical seeds of the permissive genocide and relentless indignities committed against Palestinians for over 75 years. There is no way to detach the events of a single day from the last 16 years of suffocating siege on Gaza or from the century of attempted erasure and generational trauma that preceded it.

The ghosts of buried atrocities haunt the history of Israel. Interred beneath the surface of bloodstained land are the bones and traumatic memories of the Palestinian people. Long before Deir Yassin, Zionists coordinated exterminatory violence that defined the legacy of cruelty, greed, conspiracy, and industrial slaughter of British and Zionist imperial design.

Zionist usurpers have always targeted the weakest and most vulnerable. This is nothing new or surprising. The act of maiming and beheading 52 children before their own mothers’ eyes at Deir Yassin was an atrocity orchestrated to instill paralyzing terror in the indigenous Palestinian population. From day one, they targeted and brutally murdered Palestinian women and children, identifying women as prime targets that must be eradicated to thwart the rise of future Palestinian generations.

Israel was Born of Genocide; Deir Yassin Hastened Its Birth

The Deir Yassin massacre was imperative for its psychological impact on the displacement of Palestinians more so than for its military consequences. Former leader of the Irgun terrorist group and later Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, summarized the orgy of executions at Deir Yassin.

               “Without what was done at Deir Yassin, there would not have been a State of Israel,” Begin wrote in his book, The Revolt. “While the Haganah was carrying out successful attacks on the other fronts…The Arabs began fleeing in panic, shouting ‘Deir Yassin.’”

Yet Again

Rage pierces through my chest every time I remember the atrocity propaganda of 40 Israeli beheaded babies, demanding the insistent condemnation of the world and arousing virulent hatred and dehumanization of Palestinians from Gaza to Chicago to Burlington. Meanwhile, parents in Gaza continue to dig through piles of blood-splattered rubble and scalps to identify the countless decapitated Palestinian children that this world deems necessary “collateral damage.”

The reason Israel can target so many people and kill so many children indiscriminately is because the world makes it possible by reducing Palestinians to a dehumanized sea of amorphous otherness. It views their extermination from the wordless, faceless, thoughtless viewpoint of undifferentiated brown bodies — easily interchangeable and easily eradicated for simply resisting their annihilation.

The pledge that genocide would “never again” be tolerated rings so utterly hollow when soldiers, trained deliberately in barbarity, continue to drop US-supplied 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on innocent men, women, and children, burning them alive.

The reality is that the solemn vow of “never again” conveniently reverts to “yet again” when it comes to Palestinians.

A Solitary Spark

My grandmother’s improbable survival of a massacre became the foundational story of my family’s existence. I didn’t witness the carnage of Deir Yassin, but I saw it in every crease, wrinkle, and wince in my grandmother’s face. Her narrative provides a sense of meaning to the improbability and pain of survival.

Deir Yassin also became the haunting and genocidal foundational story of Israel and Palestine’s erasure. Each murder and atrocity committed in Gaza renews our collective grief and sends shock waves of unshakable sorrow through our hearts. The grief we feel today echoes back through time to those who endured the indignities and atrocities of the 1948 Nakba.

We inherited these traumas as we inherited the color of our hair and eyes. Palestinians have never had the privilege or time to grieve, and the capital P has no bearing on the PTSD of Palestinians. Our trauma is neither post nor past. It is perpetual. But so is our hope. And that remains our foundational narrative.

In 1923, Jabotinsky Wrote:

               “Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of ‘Palestine’ into the ‘Land of Israel.”

A century later, we remember these words. And the world will remember Gaza as a living testament to resistance and steadfastness in the face of inconceivable suffering and human savagery.

Beneath the layers of our collective grief, sparks of steadfast hope continue to ignite the world and set hearts ablaze. And despite a century of unfathomable Zionist terror and barbarity, that flame will never be extinguished

Notes

[1] Nakhleh, Issa. Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem Volume 1, Intercontinental Books, New York, 1991, p. 270.

[2] Ball, G.W. and Ball, D.B, The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, London, 1992, p. 29.

[3] Statement of Safiyeh Attiyeh, dossier 179/110/17 GS, “Secret,” quoted in Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem! pp. 275 – 276.

[4] Diary of Jacques De Reynier, 27 March 1948, quoted in Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem! p. 238.

[5] Haaretz, (Hebrew daily) Tel-Aviv, 25 April 1993, as cited in Finkelstein, N. G. (2003) Image And Reality Of The Israel-Palestine Conflict (2nd Ed.). London and New York: Verso.

[6] Brenner, L. The Iron Wall: Zionist Revolutions from Jabotinksy to Shamir, Zed Books, Ltd., 1984, pp. 91 – 98.

Dina Elmuti is a trauma social worker and clinician with a background in developmental trauma, early childhood adversity, and generational trauma. She has worked with NGOs serving children in Palestine and refugee and immigrant communities in Chicago.

More by this author

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EDITORIAL | AS A FORMER FLAG-CARRYING ZIONIST, I FEEL THE PAIN. I SHARE THE BLAME. I ENDURE THE SHAME.

By Abraham A. van Kempen

11 April 2024

Quoting the Bible and using terror to spread panic were ancient devices for ‘redeeming’ a ‘Promised Land’ and cleansing out the native population.

From David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin to Peres and Shamir to Lieberman and Netanyahu, they only had to look up the Book of Joshua before applying the old methods of terror in Palestine at Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948, at Qibya on October 14– 15, 1953, and in countless – too many to mention – subsequent massacres, haunting the indigenous Palestinians to this day.

Systematically and mercilessly, Israel perpetrates crimes against humanity by displacing and dispossessing the Palestinians from their homes, seizing their properties, and rounding them up to be caged behind iron curtains in concentration camps.

Whenever I give a talk on Israel–Palestine I start by quoting Yasser Arafat:

               “Its causes do not stem from conflict between two religions or nationalisms. Neither is it a border conflict between neighboring states. It is the cause of a people deprived of their homeland, dispersed and uprooted, and living mostly in exile and refugee camps.” ⁵

How does one explain the obsession for possession, the ecstasy, the deification of the Jewish state, their Golden Calf, as an end in itself at this late hour in the history of the Jewish people and in the history of the world?

How much of historical Judaism – how deep, how old, how Jewish – is there behind the newfangled Israelism – Israeli radical ultra-nationalism? ⁶

van Kempen, Abraham. Christian Zionism ... Enraptured Around a Golden Calf, 2019 2nd Edition, (Kindle Locations 2030-2047).

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NEW YORK TIMES | AN ISRAELI STRIKE KILLED A HAMAS LEADER’S SONS

Israel confirmed the killing of the sons of the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and said all three were Hamas military operatives.

The car in which three sons of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh were reportedly killed during an Israeli strike in Al-Shati camp, west of Gaza City, on Wednesday.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An Israeli airstrike killed three sons of Ismail Haniyeh, one of Hamas’s most senior leaders, in the Gaza Strip yesterday.

Israeli ground troops have essentially pulled out of Gaza, but Israel still conducts airstrikes across the territory. The Israeli military confirmed the deaths, noting that the three sons were Hamas military operatives.

               “The enemy is delusional if it thinks that by killing my children, we will change our positions,” said Haniyeh, who leads Hamas’s political bureau from exile and has been engaged in ceasefire negotiations that have stalled, in a statement.

OPINION | THEY AVENGED, WE AVENGE, THEY WILL AVENGE: THE ENDLESS CYCLE FOR ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS 

 People walk at a Muslim graveyard amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, April 7, 2024. Credit: Mohammed Salem / Reuters

By Zvi Bar'el
Haaretz Israel
10 April 2024

This war has turned the idea of the "context" into a most vile and threatening concept.

Contemptible because it purports to provide a "rational explanation"; in other words, justification and understanding for atrocities, brutal murder, rape, torture, humiliation, burning of homes with their residents inside, and kidnapping of incarcerating them in inhumane conditions and murdering them in captivity.

Memorabilia and pictures of the hostages kidnapped in the deadly October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas from Gaza are displayed at Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday. Credit: Hannah McKay/ REUTERS

Threatening, because these acts created a "mirror context" that offers a "rational explanation" and justification for the Israeli response, the killing of more than 33,000 people, including more than 10,000 children, thousands of women, elderly, and innocent men, systematic and brutal destruction of thousands of homes, clinics, and hospitals, and uprooting more than 1.5 million people from their homes, creating hunger, diseases and a shocking shortage of medicine.

Palestinians walk through the destruction in the wake of an Israeli air and ground offensive in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip, Monday. Credit: Fatima Shbair,AP

Had these things been independent events, divorced from any historical path, as if they were one-time cosmic explosions that, when finished, would scatter their shrapnel to the wind without leaving a trace, the "context" would indeed be meaningless. Even if history were to restart in Gaza, ostensibly severed from any link, it would already give rise to the "context" that will dictate not only the nature of the next conflict but also the face, character, and properties of Israeli society.

Gaza now gives both nations, the Israeli and Palestinian, suitably justified and established "contexts," as if any were needed, that in the subsequent conflicts, will compete for the title of who will be murderous for the most righteous of reasons. The problem is this contextual justification is built on revenge.

It is not intended to resolve the conflict, reorder relationships between nations and countries, or ensure security. It first seeks to collect a fair and proper price, as if it were possible to quantify pain and suffering and measure the depth of the scars to calculate the scope of the disaster that must be dealt with by the other side.

Thus, instead of the war's objectives being militarily and politically rational, they become instructions for collecting debts by the bailiff, which include the number of bodies that must be supplied and the scale of destruction that must be carried out.

A view of a damaged house six months after the deadly October 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at the Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Israel, Sunday. Credit: Amir Cohen/ REUTERS

Therefore, if, for example, Israel does not conquer Rafah, it will not be able to balance the bill, issue a "paid in full" invoice, and complete the revenge, even if the conquest itself will not be able to ensure the security of the Gaza border communities and the residents' ability to go back home. What security can the Gaza border residents have when two and a quarter million Palestinians live opposite them, ready to burst into a horrifying "context" that will wait for the opportunity to settle the "new" historic bill's account, which for them also began on October 7?

In this reality, the bluff promising Hamas' destruction is not only the marketing of a mendacious commitment but an empty slogan trying to present the extermination of Hamas as a victory in the war, thereby concealing the real threat that is based on the fact that every Gazan now has a personal bill, which cannot be forgiven, with every resident of the State of Israel.

A Palestinian family returns to Khan Yunis after Israeli forces withdrew from the city, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in the southern Gaza Strip, Monday. Credit: Doaa Rouqa/ REUTERS

This bill is now an independent "context," which does not need a national, religious, or historical reason for hatred. Note well; it is precisely the same personal bill every Israeli citizen has with every Gazan, without distinguishing between Hamas terrorists and "non-involved" women, children, and older people.

The result is that even if Gaza is purified of every Hamas activist, Israel will continue to be a constantly frightened, threatened, tense, and stressed society. It will be a distorted and miserable society believing that for survival's sake, it's prohibited from shaping and adopting a vision that can provide reconciliation and a political solution. Such a society will concede victory to Hamas, even if we succeed in destroying it.

GUEST EDITORIAL | ISRAEL IS LOST, AND NETANYAHU HAS NO IDEA WHERE HE'S TAKING US

With my navigation app rendered useless by the Israeli army's GPS jammers, it occurred to me that the insecurity and uncertainty I felt on the road felt perfectly in line with the national mood since October 7

The Israeli army has been operating GPS jammers in the north to prevent Hezbollah, Iran, the Houthis, or any hostile force from aiming suicide drones and missiles at Israel with accuracy. Unfortunately, this also prevents navigation apps from working.

By Allison Kaplan Sommer

Haaretz Israel
08 April 2024

It has become a cliche that we only realize how dependent we've become on technology once we lose it. For those of us who lack a good sense of direction, the magic of GPS technology in the little boxes of our phones has been a true modern-day miracle.

Like millions of Israelis over the last six months of the war, I received a disorienting shock several months ago at the end of a day of work in the city of Haifa, a place I visit only occasionally and don't know well. I set my destination in Waze and glanced at the screen on my dashboard, expecting, as always, to be guided by straight lines and a reassuring voice.

Instead, I was met with a jumble of intersecting roads overlapping one another in a tight circle and leading nowhere. More alarmingly, my current location was a suburb of Beirut or the Damascus airport. After driving in circles, I called a Haifa-based friend to act as a human GPS and guide me toward the road home to my Tel Aviv suburb.

The culprit behind the jamming was neither a mortal enemy nor a mischievous hacker but Israel's military. Since October, the Israeli army has been operating GPS jammers in the north to prevent Hezbollah, Iran, the Houthis, or any hostile force from aiming suicide drones and missiles at Israel with accuracy. Unfortunately, this also prevents navigation apps from working.

Residents of Haifa and other northern cities have since become accustomed to the situation, relying on their instincts to get around. The rest of us dusted off any old maps from north Israel we had hanging around the house and put them in our cars in preparation.

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OUR WEDNESDAY NEWS ANALYSIS | ISRAEL'S KILLING OF AID WORKERS IS NO ACCIDENT. IT'S PART OF THE PLAN TO DESTROY GAZA

April 10, 2024
Source: Middle East Eye
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-killing-aid-workers-israel-plan-destroy-gaza

By Jonathan Cook
Published April 9, 2024

The isolation of Gaza is almost complete. The laws of war have been torn up, and the enclave is now entirely at Israel’s mercy

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BIDEN HAS NO EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT TO ISRAEL, IT’S ABOUT POLITICS

April 09, 2024
Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/biden-has-no-emotional-attachment-to-israel-its-about-politics/?utm_content=buffer28fbd&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=buffer

By Philip Weiss
Published April 8, 2024

The New Yorker asks, "Why is the most powerful country in human history essentially taking orders from a country that relies on it for aid?” and then avoids the most obvious answer.

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FOR THE DEFENDERS OF ISRAEL'S WAR ON GAZA, THE GAME IS UP

April 09, 2024
Source: Middle East Eye
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-israel-defenders-of-israel-game-up

By David Hearst
Published April 7, 2024

Staunch allies calling themselves friends of Israel are beginning to realize they are also friends of the murderers of Western aid workers, friends of genocide, and friends of fascism

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BUILDING THE BRIDGE! | A WAY TO GETTING TO KNOW THE OTHER AND ONE ANOTHER

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Photo Credit: Abraham A. van Kempen, our home away from home on the Dead Sea

By Abraham A. van Kempen
Senior Editor
Updated 19 January 2024

Those who commit to 'healing our broken humanity' build intercultural bridges to learn to know and understand one another and others. Readers who thumb through the Building the Bridge (BTB) pages are not mindless sheep following other mindless sheep. They THINK. They want to be at the forefront of making a difference. They're in search of the bigger picture to expand their horizons. They don't need BTB or anyone else to confirm their biases.

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Accurate knowledge promotes understanding, dispels prejudice, and awakens the desire to learn more. Words have an extraordinary power to bring people together, divide them, forge bonds of friendship, or provoke hostility. Modern technology offers unprecedented possibilities for good, fostering harmony and reconciliation. Yet its misuse can do untold harm, leading to misunderstanding, prejudice, and conflict.

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Related Articles Recently Posted on www.buildingthebridgefoundation.com:

OUR FRIDAY NEWS ANALYSIS

OUR WEDNESDAY NEWS ANALYSIS

OUR MONDAY EDITION

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The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of the Building the Bridge Foundation