A baby doll symbolizing the small children who were abducted by Hamas militants during the group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel is displayed at a vigil for the victims in central Tel Aviv, Israel, Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
The Associated Press
A little girl lies prone, her face barely recognizable under a blanket of dust, as gloved hands scrape away the mounds of pulverized concrete under which she’s been buried alive. A man sitting in the rubble of a destroyed building in the Gaza Strip screams in anguish for the family members he’s lost. A masked volunteer emerges from a pile of collapsed metal walls, gently bearing away the lifeless body of a young child.
On the other side of the border, a bloodstain in the form of a handprint is smeared onto the wall of a shelter at a kibbutz in Israel where Hamas militants slaughtered residents during their violent incursion into Israel on Oct. 7. Votive candles flicker atop the Star of David on an Israeli flag displayed during a vigil for the 1,200 victims of the bloody attack. And photographs of the 140 hostages being held by Hamas militants are projected onto the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.
The human suffering of the Israel-Hamas war is palpable in myriad stark images captured by photographers for The Associated Press.
Five weeks into the conflict, Israeli ground troops are fighting Hamas militants in northern Gaza as airstrikes pound Gaza City and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee southward. In one photo, a woman whose face is hidden by a white shirt tied to a stick waves the makeshift flag of surrender to prevent her and the family members who accompany her from being shot as they relocate. In another, a man’s face sags with sadness as he uses a hand to support a heavy duffel bag balanced on his back.
As airstrikes flatten building after building, massive walls of dust shoot up into the air and residents race to find survivors. In one photo, several men wield pickaxes as they prepare to bust through sheets of fallen concrete. In another, a forlorn face peeks through twisted rebar and gaps in piles of rubble seeking signs of life.
___
Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Day after day, thousands more people in northern Gaza are scrambling to get to a place of greater safety, as intense fighting rages there between Israel and Hamas.
These civilians are streaming out of the northern part of the territory, making the journey south whatever way they can — many on foot, travelling with family in tow.
Akram Al Sabbagh described undertaking a “very dangerous” hours-long walk to get to the southern part of the Gaza Strip.
The 73-year-old Canadian travelled to Gaza in September to visit his brother. He’s already had to relocate several times as a result of the outbreak of the war.
An Israeli airstrike hits a location in the Gaza Strip on Friday. (Leo Correa/The Associated Press)
There are clear dangers for people staying put in northern Gaza, but they also face risks in travelling south — not only during the journey itself, but also in finding shelter and staying out of harm’s way once they get to their destination.
Adding to that, the greater the number of people who head south, the more acute the pressure is on authorities and aid agencies to provide enough food, water and other necessities for the growing number of civilians gathering there.
Ongoing danger
Conflict erupted in Gaza in the wake of a surprise cross-border attack Hamas launched across parts of southern Israel nearly five weeks ago.
In response, Israel declared war and has unleashed a campaign involving airstrikes and a ground offensive, with the goal of dismantling the Islamist militant group and its infrastructure.
An aerial view shows Palestinian civilians walking along the Salah al-Din road on Friday, as they head toward the southern part of the Gaza Strip. (Belal Al Sabbagh/AFP/Getty Images)
The resulting death toll has been immense, with thousands of civilians killed and at least two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people internally displaced within the besieged enclave.
As of Friday, officials from the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza say more than 11,000 people have died in the territory since Oct. 7. In Israel, the Foreign Affairs Ministry revised the government’s figure that some 1,400 people had been killed — Canadians among them — and now says the number stands at about 1,200. As well, some 240 people were taken hostage after the initial Hamas attack.
With Israeli forces pushing further into Gaza, the fighting does not seem likely to halt any time soon.
People holding their belongings are shown in a horse-drawn cart, as they attempt to leave the northern Gaza Strip on Friday. (Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)
Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CBC News Network that Hamas is “scattered” across the territory but “has a lot of fighters in the north” — including the Gaza City area, according to reports.
“Israel expects that the fighting back will get more fierce as its forces move forward,” Byman said.
Daily pauses
On Friday, Israel said it had granted a six-hour window of time, which would allow civilians to escape northern Gaza along Salah al-Din, a key artery people have been moving along for days to exit the north.
It also agreed to the opening of a second route, after a deal announced by the White House a day earlier.
WATCH | The need for pauses in fighting:
Israel agrees to 4-hour pauses in fighting in Gaza
Featured VideoWARNING: This story contains distressing images | Israel has agreed to daily four-hour ‘tactical pauses’ in Gaza to allow for civilian evacuations as U.S. officials say that Hamas figures might undercount the mounting number of deaths.
The White House said Israel agreed to implement a brief humanitarian pause each day.
Israel estimates that more than 850,000 of the 1.1 million people in northern Gaza have left, according to military spokesperson Jonathan Conricus. He called the pauses “quick humanitarian windows” that allow southward movement “while we are fighting.”
However, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, called the pauses “cynical and cruel,” saying it was just enough “to let people breathe and remember what is the sound of life without bombing, before starting bombing them again.”
A large crowd of Palestinian civilians make their way along the Salah al-Din road, en route to the southern Gaza Strip on Friday. (Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)
Mixed emotions
On Friday alone, tens of thousands of new refugees from the north had reached the central city of Deir al-Balah.
With no fuel for vehicles, the crowds had walked for hours as explosions echoed a short distance away.
Palestinian families walk by two people resting on the side of the road as they travel by foot on Friday from the north of the Gaza Strip toward southern areas of the besieged territory. (Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images)
Among them were wounded and older people. They arrived hungry, exhausted and with a stew of emotions — relief, rage and despair.
Reem Asant, 50, described winding through the streets on the way out of Gaza City trying to avoid shelling.
For Canada’s Al Sabbagh, his journey has brought him to the Egyptian border crossing at Rafah, where he and others with Canadian ties are still waiting for it to reopen.
His own proximity to the Rafah crossing left him with the hope that he will soon be able to leave the conflict behind.
Global Affairs Canada, however, said none of the Canadians on Friday’s list of foreign nationals approved to leave the Gaza Strip were able to exit.
There were 266 Canadian citizens, permanent residents and their family members on the list who hoped to cross into Egypt.
6.5% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean suffers from hunger, or 43.2 million people. Credit: FAO
Opinion by Mario Lubetkin (santiago)
Inter Press Service
SANTIAGO, Nov 10 (IPS) – Mario Lubetkin is FAO Assistant Director-General and FAO Regional Representative for Latin America and the CaribbeanThe figures published by the latest Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition 2023 are cause for great concern. The document is clear: hunger continues to significantly affect Latin America and the Caribbean.
The reasons are varied; consequences of the pandemic, armed conflicts, climate crisis, economic slowdown, rising food inflation, and income inequality have all generated a difficult scenario that requires immediate action.
Our region has an opportunity that we must not miss. Only with stability and peace will it be possible to achieve development and resolve food insecurity.
According to the Regional Overview 2023, although Latin America and the Caribbean registers a slight drop of 0.5% in hunger levels when compared to the previous measurement, it is essential to remember that, despite this progress, we are still 0.9 percentage points above the hunger levels of 2019, prior to the outbreak of COVID-19.
But hunger does not affect the region uniformly. In South America, there was a reduction of 3.5 million hungry people between 2021 and 2022, but there are still 6 million additional undernourished people compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. In Mesoamerica, the prevalence of hunger has barely changed, affecting 9.1 million people in 2022, representing 5.1%.
The situation is worrisome in the Caribbean, where 7.2 million people experienced hunger in 2022, with an alarming prevalence of 16.3% of the population. Between 2021 and 2022, hunger increased by 700,000 people, and compared to 2019, the increase was 1 million people, with Haiti being one of the most affected countries.
While hunger figures continue to concern us, overweight in children under five years of age continues to rise, exceeding the global estimate, and a quarter of the adult population lives with obesity.
FAO recognizes the urgency of addressing this issue and is committed to updating the CELAC FNS Plan for food and nutritional security. The recent Buenos Aires Declaration of the VII CELAC Summit reaffirmed the commitment of the 33 member states to food security, agriculture, and sustainable development.
This declaration emphasized the importance of updating the plan in accordance with the new international context and the challenges facing the region, with the technical assistance of global organizations like FAO and regional organizations such as ECLAC, IICA, and ALADI, to achieve a comprehensive solution.
The update of the food plan takes into account national commitments related to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, evidence-based policies and good practices in the region, providing a mechanism that contributes to the eradication of poverty, hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition.
Eradicating hunger is a shared responsibility, and together we must redouble our efforts to ensure that no citizen of Latin America and the Caribbean goes hungry. Food security is essential for the well-being of our communities and the sustainable development of the region, and we must continue to work together, leaving no one behind. FAO is fully committed to this challenge.
US Air Force Begins to Flight Test B-21 Raider Strategic Bomber
US Air Force Begins to Flight Test B-21 Raider Strategic Bomber
The B-21 Raider stealth bomber has officially gone airborne during the first test flight on Friday, nearly a year since the aircraft was presented to the public, a US Air Force spokesperson told Sputnik in a statement.
“The B-21 Raider is in flight testing. Flight testing is a critical step in the test campaign managed by the Air Force Test Center and 412th Test Wing’s B-21 Combined Test Force to provide survivable, long-range, penetrating strike capabilities to deter aggression and strategic attacks against the United States, allies, and partners,” the statement said. At this moment, six more test aircraft are being produced and the US Air Force will receive at least 100 of these aircraft, which should become the next generation of strategic stealth bombers after the departure of the B-1s and B-2s with new penetrating deep strike conventional and nuclear capabilities, according to the statement. The Ellsworth Air Force base in the US state of South Dakota has become the first and so far the only base where training and other services related to B-21 Raider are conducted. In the future, air bases in other states will also be added, including in Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, and California, the statement added. Each B-21 Raider will cost more than $700 million to procure in 2023 prices, $150 million more than in 2010 when the program was initiated.
b-21 raider stealth bomber, us air force, us nuclear bomber, us new nuclear bomber
b-21 raider stealth bomber, us air force, us nuclear bomber, us new nuclear bomber
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – The B-21 Raider stealth bomber has officially gone airborne during the first test flight on Friday, nearly a year since the aircraft was presented to the public, a US Air Force spokesperson told Sputnik in a statement.
“The B-21 Raider is in flight testing. Flight testing is a critical step in the test campaign managed by the Air Force Test Center and 412th Test Wing’s B-21 Combined Test Force to provide survivable, long-range, penetrating strike capabilities to deter aggression and strategic attacks against the United States, allies, and partners,” the statement said.
At this moment, six more test aircraft are being produced and the US Air Force will receive at least 100 of these aircraft, which should become the next generation of strategic stealth bombers after the departure of the B-1s and B-2s with new penetrating deep strike conventional and nuclear capabilities, according to the statement.
US Air Force Reveals Their B-21 Raider to Compete With China
3 December 2022, 01:03 GMT
The Ellsworth Air Force base in the US state of South Dakota has become the first and so far the only base where training and other services related to B-21 Raider are conducted. In the future, air bases in other states will also be added, including in Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, and California, the statement added.
Each B-21 Raider will cost more than $700 million to procure in 2023 prices, $150 million more than in 2010 when the program was initiated.
South Korea’s government has launched a four-week campaign against the blood-sucking insects amid a public panic
The South Korean government is launching a plan to combat bedbugs amid a growing number of reports of the pests being discovered: the pests have been spotted in 17 cities and provinces across the country so far. The Asian nation is the latest to address the problem, and authorities have not ruled out the possibility that the insects could have been brought in by travelers from France.
The measures include inspecting and disinfecting thousands of public facilities where the blood-sucking insects may be hiding.
Bedbugs, which have recently been spreading in France and other Western states, may have appeared in the Asian country “along with foreign tourists, who have increased their arrivals since the end of the coronavirus pandemic,” the spokesman for South Korea’s ruling conservative People’s Power Party said on Thursday.
The official said the pests were thought to have been absent from Korea since the 1970s, when toxic DDT pesticides became more widely available. In mid-September, however, a bedbug infestation was reported at a university dormitory in the city of Daegu. A few weeks later, the blood-sucking insects were discovered in a sauna in Incheon.
As of Tuesday, about 30 cases had been reported nationwide, local media said, citing the joint national headquarters set up to combat the bedbug menace. Most of the cases have occurred in the capital, Seoul, a city of more than 9.6 million people.
On Friday, the Ministry of Health and Welfare held a meeting to address the problem. According to a subsequent press release, inspections of accommodations, bathing and medical facilities will be carried out from November 13 to December 8.
Minister of the Interior and Safety Lee Sang-min said on Wednesday that “the public seems to be too anxious,” describing the bedbug situation as “serious,” according to media reports. He said the outbreak “started in the Paris area” and that the pests may have been brought in by travelers. “Of course, it is also possible that they are indigenous to the country, but we haven’t received any reports about that yet,” the minister added.
Since Wednesday, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency has been issuing instructions on pest avoidance to people arriving from countries with confirmed bedbug outbreaks, such as France and the United Kingdom, the Korean Herald reported.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) announced Wednesday that it is promoting a citywide bedbug-free project by establishing a pest control system to quickly respond to the recent spike in bedbug reports. The statement noted that while bed bugs don’t carry infectious diseases, they feed on human blood, causing not only inconvenience but allergic reactions and even mental fatigue.
Reports of the blood-sucking insects in South Korea came after France was hit by a bedbug outbreak last month, following Paris’ hosting of Fashion Week and the Rugby World Cup. Both events attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors.
This sparked fears of a possible bedbug outbreak in the UK, as some residents also noticed bedbugs in public places. In early November, one of London’s libraries was closed due to an infestation.
Suella Braverman’s allies mount fightback on home secretary’s behalf
Good morning. Since about 11.35am yesterday, when Downing Street decided to break the habit of a lifetime and give a direct answer to an awkward question, it has been clear that Suella Braverman’s future as home secretary is on the line. Rishi Sunak is mulling over what to do about the fact that she published an article in the Times accusing the Metropolitan police of bias without No 10 approval. Arguably this was a breach of the ministerial code, and undoubtedly this was a provocative challenge to Sunak’s authority. Braverman is a repeat offender in this regard, and many in the party are urging Sunak to sack her.
But since then not a lot has happened. Sunak is not a man for hasty decisions, and if there is a formal investigation into whether she broke the ministerial code, that might take a few days to complete. Braverman was in hospital yesterday with a relative having an operation, and that might hold things up a bit too. There are also two events in the diary that strengthen the case for delay.
Armistice Day is tomorrow, and it would be easier to sack Braverman if the pro-Palestinian march passed off peacefully, vindicating the police and making it easier to say Braverman was scaremongering.
And on Wednesday next week the supreme court will rule on whether the Rwanda deportation policy is legal. If the government loses, it will need a plan B, and Sunak is not enthusiastic about the one Braverman will propose: leaving the European convention on human rights. If the government wins, that will amount to arguably the biggest policy victory of Sunak’s premiership. Even Tory MPs critical of Braverman may give her some credit.
All this is a roundabout way of saying, while it is not impossible that Braverman could be sacked today, it seems unlikely.
Although the story has not moved on a lot since yesterday morning, one development worth noting is that Braverman’s allies are mounting a fightback on her behalf. In Conservative politics the views of Tory papers count a lot (the same is not really true of leftish papers in Labour politics) and the Daily Mail splash headline could not have been better for Braverman if she had written it herself.
And here is an extract from the story by Jason Groves, Clarie Ellcott and David Barrett.
One MP ally of the Home Secretary said: ‘There was an operation by the whips to stoke anger against Suella.
‘But a large group of MPs on the Right pushed back. The message was simple: ‘Don’t try it, she speaks for us. So if you come for her, you come for us’.’
Another said Mr Sunak ‘owes her big time’ for supporting him after Liz Truss resigned last year – a move that helped persuade Boris Johnson to abandon a potential comeback.
‘Without Suella it would have been Boris, not Rishi,’ the source said. ‘He owes her big time and although he might want to forget it, we haven’t. If he tries to sack her it will end very badly for him.’
And this is what Lee Anderson, a deputy chair of the Conservative party, has been tweeting this morning. He is placing loyalty to Braverman ahead of loyalty to Sunak who appointed him to his party post.
@SuellaBraverman MP has NOT
Described Hamas or Hezbollah as friends.
Not took the knee on Whitehall whilst BLM riot.
These were the actions of MPs within the Labour Party, the same party who want her sacked.
But Suella is guilty.
Guilty of saying what most of us are thinking and saying. Thank goodness we have a Home Secretary who refuses to be cancelled.
She is using everyday language used by everyday people. Labour MPs would know this if they got out more.
We are getting a lobby briefing from No 10 at 11.30am. Otherwise, the diary looks quite empty. If I can find any other politics to cover, it will be here, but I expect the focus will mostly be on Braverman.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
Key events
Suella Braverman seems to have GB News onside. Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of several Tory MPs paid to work as a presenter on the channel (Lee Anderson is another – see 9.08am), backed her when he was on the channel last night, saying:
The home secretary has said what many people are thinking and the calls to sack her seem to be disproportionate because whether she’s broken the ministerial code or not is something of a moot point … she was talking about her own departmental area where she has direct responsibility.
But Rees-Mogg’s endorsement was not not unconditional. He said Braverman should be acting, not commentating.
People expect the government to act not just commentate. At the moment the government seems to be unsure where it’s going and this is leaving a vacuum that the police are unable to fill.
This echoes something that George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor, said on his Political Currency podcast yesterday. Osborne is at the opposite end of the Tory spectrum from Braverman and Rees-Mogg, and he suggested Rishi Sunak should sack the home secretary. But, quoting the election strategist Lynton Crosby, he said it was wrong for Braverman to act like a commenatory. Osborne explained:
The home secretary is actually becoming a commentator when she should be acting as the home secretary.
There’s a thing Lynton Crosby the Tory strategist used to say to David Cameron and me, ‘don’t be Connie the commentator!’ That was the Australian phrase they used.
He says you’re not the commentator on the situation, you’re the prime minister, you’re the chancellor, in this case, Suella Braverman is the home secretary.
She’s got real decisions to make about how to support the police in their policing of demonstrations. She’s got powers to override the police and ban demonstrations. She should be exuding all the authority of her office, rather than being yet another newspaper commentator, who is in some senses, demonstrating her powerlessness.
The Conservative MP Miriam Cates defended Suella Braverman on the Today programme this morning. She rejected claims that the home secretary was inflaming tensions and she said Braverman’s claims about the police being biased in favour of leftwing protest groups like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign were perfectly reasonable. She said:
I think the home secretary has a view that is very mainstream in the rest of the UK.
Cates is co-chair of a Tory group launched this year called the New Conservatives. Her co-chair is Danny Kruger, who was also on the Today programme, yesterday, defending Braverman. The group wants lower taxes, less immigration, and socially conservative, “pro-family” policies. It is not clear how powerful it is – only 14 supporters are listed on its website – but it has been getting a lot of positive coverage in Tory papers like the Daily Telegraph who love this stuff. Given the interventions of Cates and Kruger, it also looks as though it might function as Braverman’s campaign base in a Tory leadership contest.
Braverman might also get the backing of the European Research Group, the once-mighty pro-Brexit faction that she chaired at one point. But the ERG is much more marginal than it used to be. On the issues that matter now in Tory politics, the group is not united, and Brexiters are less keen to talk about the subject than they once were.
It has become normal for ministers giving interviews in recent weeks to start by failing to endorse something said by Suella Braverman, and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, and Rob Halfon, the skills minister, were both at it this morning.
Asked about Braverman’s most recent comments in the Times, Hunt said:
As many other cabinet ministers have said, the words that she used are not words that I myself would have used.
But I have a productive relationship with her as a colleague and I have always given her the money that she needs to fund police, bring down crime and to fund the immigration and asylum system.
Asked if he would have been allowed to defy No 10 in the way Braverman did, Hunt went on:
The prime minister has said that he has full confidence in her. And I have nothing further to add.
And Halfon, asked if he agreed with Braverman’s anti-Met comments, told LBC:
I think the home secretary has a unique way of expressing herself.
Asked if he would have published an article without No 10 approval, he replied:
No I wouldn’t. Everything I do in terms of articles and speeches must be signed off by No 10.
Suella Braverman’s allies mount fightback on home secretary’s behalf
Good morning. Since about 11.35am yesterday, when Downing Street decided to break the habit of a lifetime and give a direct answer to an awkward question, it has been clear that Suella Braverman’s future as home secretary is on the line. Rishi Sunak is mulling over what to do about the fact that she published an article in the Times accusing the Metropolitan police of bias without No 10 approval. Arguably this was a breach of the ministerial code, and undoubtedly this was a provocative challenge to Sunak’s authority. Braverman is a repeat offender in this regard, and many in the party are urging Sunak to sack her.
But since then not a lot has happened. Sunak is not a man for hasty decisions, and if there is a formal investigation into whether she broke the ministerial code, that might take a few days to complete. Braverman was in hospital yesterday with a relative having an operation, and that might hold things up a bit too. There are also two events in the diary that strengthen the case for delay.
Armistice Day is tomorrow, and it would be easier to sack Braverman if the pro-Palestinian march passed off peacefully, vindicating the police and making it easier to say Braverman was scaremongering.
And on Wednesday next week the supreme court will rule on whether the Rwanda deportation policy is legal. If the government loses, it will need a plan B, and Sunak is not enthusiastic about the one Braverman will propose: leaving the European convention on human rights. If the government wins, that will amount to arguably the biggest policy victory of Sunak’s premiership. Even Tory MPs critical of Braverman may give her some credit.
All this is a roundabout way of saying, while it is not impossible that Braverman could be sacked today, it seems unlikely.
Although the story has not moved on a lot since yesterday morning, one development worth noting is that Braverman’s allies are mounting a fightback on her behalf. In Conservative politics the views of Tory papers count a lot (the same is not really true of leftish papers in Labour politics) and the Daily Mail splash headline could not have been better for Braverman if she had written it herself.
And here is an extract from the story by Jason Groves, Clarie Ellcott and David Barrett.
One MP ally of the Home Secretary said: ‘There was an operation by the whips to stoke anger against Suella.
‘But a large group of MPs on the Right pushed back. The message was simple: ‘Don’t try it, she speaks for us. So if you come for her, you come for us’.’
Another said Mr Sunak ‘owes her big time’ for supporting him after Liz Truss resigned last year – a move that helped persuade Boris Johnson to abandon a potential comeback.
‘Without Suella it would have been Boris, not Rishi,’ the source said. ‘He owes her big time and although he might want to forget it, we haven’t. If he tries to sack her it will end very badly for him.’
And this is what Lee Anderson, a deputy chair of the Conservative party, has been tweeting this morning. He is placing loyalty to Braverman ahead of loyalty to Sunak who appointed him to his party post.
@SuellaBraverman MP has NOT
Described Hamas or Hezbollah as friends.
Not took the knee on Whitehall whilst BLM riot.
These were the actions of MPs within the Labour Party, the same party who want her sacked.
But Suella is guilty.
Guilty of saying what most of us are thinking and saying. Thank goodness we have a Home Secretary who refuses to be cancelled.
She is using everyday language used by everyday people. Labour MPs would know this if they got out more.
We are getting a lobby briefing from No 10 at 11.30am. Otherwise, the diary looks quite empty. If I can find any other politics to cover, it will be here, but I expect the focus will mostly be on Braverman.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
BEIJING: China demanded Friday that Manila stop infringing on its territorial sovereignty after taking what it described as “control measures” against Philippine ships at a contested South China Sea outpost. “The China Coast Guard followed the Philippine ships in accordance with the law, took control measures, and made temporary special arrangements for the Philippines to transport food and other necessary daily supplies,” China Coast Guard spokesman Gan Yu said. “The Philippines’ actions infringe on China’s territorial sovereignty, violate the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, and are contrary to its own commitments,” Gan added. “We urge the Philippines to immediately stop its infringing actions.” “The China Coast Guard will continue to carry out rights protection and law enforcement actions in waters under China’s jurisdiction in accordance with the law, resolutely safeguarding national sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.” China claims almost the entire South China Sea, through which trillions of dollars in trade passes annually, and has ignored a 2016 international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis. Over the past decade, Beijing has deployed vessels to patrol the waters and built artificial islands that it has militarised to reinforce its stance.
The gruesome scenes of death and destruction in Gaza are a reminder that for Israel, violence is not incidental, accidental or coincidental. It is part and parcel of its colonial DNA.
Like the French in Algeria, the Dutch in Indonesia and South Africa, the Belgians in the Congo, the Spaniards in South America and the Europeans in North America, the Zionists have also dehumanised the natives of the land as a precursor to or justification for guilt-free repression and violence. But colonialism must not be conflated with Judaism. If anything, the Jews have historically been the victims of racism for centuries, rendering many of them anti-colonialists.
In 1948, Israel was established on the ruins of another people, the Palestinians. It was made into a Jewish majority state through the deliberate ethnic cleansing of the land’s 750,000 Palestinian inhabitants. Since then, Israel has maintained security through state repression, military occupation, bloody wars and countless massacres against civilians.
Nazareth, the city of my birth, was one of the few to be spared from ethnic cleansing but only because a military commander named Benjamin Dunkelman, a Canadian Jew who led the 7th Brigade of the Israeli army, refused to carry out his superiors’ evacuation order for this Christian majority city, as he later wrote, mainly out of fear of the international repercussions.
About 400 other Palestinian towns and villages were not so lucky. They were all depopulated, and a majority was entirely decimated. Their inhabitants were either killed or kicked out. The properties in them were either demolished or confiscated. They were given new Hebrew names. Those Palestinians who tried to return to their homes were either shot or forcibly sent to neighbouring countries.
In his book, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948, Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli political scientist, writes: “Not since the end of the Middle Ages had the civilised world witnessed the wholesale appropriation of the sacred sites of a defeated religious community by members of the victorious one.”
Since then, Israel has set its eyes on the people per se, regardless of its leadership or theirs. Palestinians are seen by Israel either as an enemy from within that must be eradicated or as a demographic threat that needs to be removed. It is no coincidence that since its inception, Israel has established an oppressive regime of “Jewish superiority”. This regime was extended after the 1967 war and occupation to the entirety of historic Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Hence the Palestinian cry, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
For decades, Israel has used disproportionate force and carried out countless massacres against Palestinian civilians as a form of revenge, punishment and deterrence. Last month, the Palestinians commemorated the 70th anniversary of the massacre of Qibya, where, in retaliation for a Palestinian attack on an Israeli settlement that killed three people, including two children, Israeli forces under the leadership of Ariel Sharon attacked the West Bank village of about 2,000 inhabitants, killing 69 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
That same vengeful mindset has been applied 70 years later in Gaza. It is a deterrence strategy, deliberately aimed at harming civilians to distance them from their leaders and the groups fighting in their name. Today, the Israeli propaganda machine is busy collating desperate and angry cries, real and manufactured, from Gaza residents projecting blame on Hamas for bringing Israel’s wrath upon them.
Israel never accepts an “eye for an eye” in its confrontations with the Palestinians. It insists on a ratio of 1 to 10 or 20 when it comes to its civilian casualties vs Palestinian civilian casualties. Hence, the Palestinian civilian must pay a heavy price in each and every clash, regardless of any moral or legal consideration.
Nowhere is the dissymmetry more pervasive than in Israel’s 56-year military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which by its very nature is a perpetual system of violence against civilians. Generation after generation of Palestinians have had to endure a racist, gruesome and illegal military occupation that has included daily humiliations, collective punishment, land confiscations, and the destruction of lives and livelihoods. For Gaza, this has meant a 17-year siege of the strip through a dreadful and inhumane military blockade, military incursions, bombings of civilian infrastructure and more.
Although Israel claims it has “no choice”, its occupation is in fact driven by strategy, not by necessity. Throughout the past six decades, Israel has controlled the Palestinian territories in part to colonise them through hundreds of illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian lands, in part to hold their population hostage until their leaders accept its political dictates, which is by definition a form of state terrorism, which means using violence against civilians for political ends.
Another important factor behind Israel’s violence against Palestinian civilians, as I explained here, is hatred – hatred that is propelled by fear, envy and anger.
Israel fears all that is Palestinian steadfastness, Palestinian unity, Palestinian resistance, Palestinian poetry and all Palestinian national symbols. Such fear generates hatred because a state that is always afraid cannot be free. Israel is angry at the Palestinians for refusing to give up or give in, for not going away – far away. They refuse to cede their basic rights, let alone concede defeat. Israel is also envious of Palestinian inner power and outward pride. It is envious of their strong beliefs and readiness to sacrifice.
In short, Israel hates the people of Palestine for impeding the realisation of the Zionist utopia over all historical Palestine. And it especially hates those living in Gaza, as I wrote last year, for turning the dream into a nightmare.
But the answer in Gaza and the rest of Palestine cannot be more killing and more occupation. In fact, Israel’s ongoing industrial-scale slaughter and nationwide repression of the Palestinians, in retaliation of Hamas’s gruesome October 7 attacks in southern Israel, is both utterly criminal and terribly foolish. Israel has tried to live by the sword for the past 75 years, but it has sowed more of the same insecurity, infamy and anger. Repeating the same strategy again and again and expecting different results is indeed stupid. If it continues to deny the Palestinians a life and a future, Israel also will end up with no life or future worth living in this Arab region.
SAN FRANCISCO, USA, Nov 09 (IPS) – The governments of Israel and the United States are now in disagreement over how many Palestinian civilians it’s okay to kill. Last week — as the death toll from massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza neared 10,000 people, including several thousand children — top U.S. officials began to worry about the rising horrified outcry at home and abroad. So, they went public with muted misgivings and calls for a “humanitarian pause.” But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear that he would have none of it.
Such minor tactical discord does little to chip away at the solid bedrock alliance between the two countries, which are most of the way through a 10-year deal that guarantees $38 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel. And now, as the carnage in Gaza continues, Washington is rushing to provide extra military assistance worth $14 billion.
Days ago, In These Times reported that the Biden administration is seeking congressional permission “to unilaterally blanket-approve the future sale of military equipment and weapons — like ballistic missiles and artillery ammunition — to Israel without notifying Congress.” And so, “the Israeli government would be able to purchase up to $3.5 billion in military articles and services in complete secrecy.”
While Israeli forces were using weapons provided by the United States to slaughter Palestinian civilians, resupply flights were landing in Israel courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. Air & Space Forces Magazine published a photo showing “U.S. Air Force Airmen and Israeli military members unload cargo from a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III on a ramp at Nevatim Base, Israel.”
Pictures taken on Oct. 24 show that the military cargo went from Travis Air Force Base in California to Ramstein Air Base in Germany to Israel. Overall, the magazine reported, “the Air Force’s airlift fleet has been steadily working to deliver essential munitions, armored vehicles, and aid to Israel.” And so, the apartheid country is receiving a huge boost to assist with the killing.
The horrific atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 have opened the door to protracted horrific atrocities by Israel with key assistance from the United States.
Oxfam America has issued a briefing paper decrying the Pentagon’s plans to ship tens of thousands of 155mm artillery shells to the Israeli military. The organization noted that “Israel’s use of this munition in past conflicts demonstrates that its use would be virtually assured to be indiscriminate, unlawful, and devastating to civilians in Gaza.”
Oxfam added: “There are no known scenarios in which 155mm artillery shells could be used in Israel’s ground operation in Gaza in compliance with international humanitarian law.”
During the last several weeks, “international humanitarian law” has been a common phrase coming from President Biden while expressing support for Israel’s military actions. It’s an Orwellian absurdity, as if saying the words is sufficient while constantly helping Israel to violate international humanitarian law in numerous ways.
“Israeli forces have used white phosphorus, a chemical that ignites when in contact with oxygen, causing horrific and severe burns, on densely populated neighborhoods,” Human Rights Watch senior legal adviser Clive Baldwin wrote in late October. “White phosphorus can burn down to the bone, and burns to 10 percent of the human body are often fatal.”
Baldwin added: “Israel has also engaged in the collective punishment of Gaza’s population through cutting off food, water, electricity, and fuel. This is a war crime, as is willfully blocking humanitarian relief from reaching civilians in need.”
At the end of last week, the Win Without War organization noted that “senior administration officials are increasingly alarmed by how the Israeli government is conducting its military operations in Gaza, as well as the reputational repercussions of the Biden administration’s support for a collective punishment strategy that clearly violates international law. Many worry that the U.S. will be blamed for the Israeli military’s indiscriminate attacks on civilians, particularly women and children.”
News reporting now tells us that Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken want a bit of a course correction. For them, the steady large-scale killing of Palestinian civilians became concerning when it became a PR problem.
Dressed up in an inexhaustible supply of euphemistic rhetoric and double-talk, such immoral policies are stunning to see in real time. And, for many people in Gaza, literally breathtaking.
Now, guided by political calculus, the White House is trying to persuade Israel’s prime minister to titrate the lethal doses of bombing Gaza. But as Netanyahu has made clear in recent days, Israel is going to do whatever it wants, despite pleas from its patron.
While, in effect, it largely functions in the Middle East as part of the U.S. war machine, Israel has its own agenda. Yet the two governments are locked into shared, long-term, overarching strategic interests in the Middle East that have absolutely no use for human rights except as rhetorical window-dressing.
Biden made that clear last year when he fist-bumped the de facto ruler of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a dictatorship that — with major U.S. assistance — has led an eight-year war on Yemen costing nearly 400,000 lives.
The war machine needs constant oiling from news media. That requires ongoing maintenance of the doublethink assumption that when Israel terrorizes and kills people from the air, the Israeli Defense Force is fighting “terrorism” without engaging in it.
Another helpful notion in recent weeks has been the presumption that — while Hamas puts out “propaganda” — Israel does not. And so, on Nov. 2, the PBS NewsHour’s foreign affairs correspondent Nick Schifrin reported on what he called “Hamas propaganda videos.”
Fair enough. Except that it would be virtually impossible for mainstream U.S. news media to also matter-of-factly refer to public output from the Israeli government as “propaganda.” (I asked Schifrin for comment, but my several emails and texts went unanswered.)
Whatever differences might surface from time to time, the United States and Israel remain enmeshed. To the power elite in Washington, the bilateral alliance is vastly more important than the lives of Palestinian people. And it’s unlikely that the U.S. government will really confront Israel over its open-ended killing spree in Gaza.
Consider this: Just weeks before beginning her second stint as House speaker in January 2019, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was recorded on video at a forum sponsored by the Israeli American Council as she declared: “I have said to people when they ask me — if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it aid — our cooperation — with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”
Even making allowances for bizarre hyperbole, Pelosi’s statement is revealing of the kind of mentality that continues to hold sway in official Washington. It won’t change without a huge grassroots movement that refuses to go away.
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in summer 2023 by The New Press.
OPINION / EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — This is the twentieth anniversary of the Six Party Talks, established in 2003, to resolve the nuclear issue with North Korea. It’s an auspicious time for China, the host of the Talks, to put aside tension with the U.S. and encourage North Korea to return to negotiations. Ideally, the subject of North Korea will be discussed when President Joe Biden meets President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in San Francisco later this month.
Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine – and the ongoing bloody war there – and Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 – and the ongoing war in Gaza – have diverted attention away from North Korea, although North Korea reportedly is providing Russia with artillery shells and rockets for its war in Ukraine and Hamas is reportedly using North Korean F-7 rocket-propelled grenades in its war with Israel.
Hamas, a proxy of Iran, receives training, funding, and support from Iran for its terrorist activities. And North Korea continues to have a close relationship with Iran, having provided Tehran with rockets, missiles, and weaponry over the years, in return for needed cash for their nuclear and missile programs.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has been transparent in his relatively recent embrace of Russia, with his public visit to Russia for meetings with Vladimir Putin and the recent visit of Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, to Pyongyang for meetings with Kim.
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The warming of Russia-North Korea relations comes at a time when North Korea has already in 2023, launched three Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), the latest in July – a solid fuel missile with a range of 15,000 kilometers, capable of targeting the entire U.S. What followed was Kim Jong Un enshrining nuclear weapons in North Korea’s constitution and last year proclaiming a “first use” policy for nuclear weapons if there is an imminent or perceived to be an imminent threat to the North’s leadership or its command-and-control infrastructure.
Since the failed Hanoi Summit in 2019, North Korea has eschewed any talks with the U.S. or South Korea, while building more nuclear weapons and launching more sophisticated ballistic missiles, to include hypersonic and cruise missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
South Korea’s Defense Minister, Shin Won-sik, recently publicly expressed concern that North Korea could conduct a surprise attack on South Korea, like the surprise attack on Israel by Hamas. Shin said South Korea would have to enhance its surveillance of North Korea and suspend a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement – with buffer zones along sea and land boundaries and no-fly zones – in order to resume surveillance of an unpredictable North Korea.
Any intentional or accidental flare-up on the Korean Peninsula could escalate quickly, with the potential to destabilize the whole of Northeast Asia. And given the current alignment of North Korea with a revanchist Russia and Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism, the chances are that North Korea may now feel emboldened to challenge South Korea and, as they did in March 2010, with the sinking of the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan, killing 46 seamen, they may perpetrate another act of aggression against the South.
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In early 2003, when North Korea quit the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and started to produce plutonium at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, for nuclear weapons, former Secretary of State Colin Powell reached out to his Chinese counterpart and persuaded China to convince North Korea to enter into Six-Party Talks negotiations hosted by China and including the U.S., South Korea, Japan, and Russia. China’s current Foreign Minister and Politburo member, Wang Yi, hosted the talks and on September 19, 2005, North Korea agreed to dismantle all nuclear weapons and facilities in return for security assurances, economic development assistance and a path to normal relations with the U.S., South Korea, and Japan.
Next week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco from November 11 to 17, during which President Joe Biden will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, will be an opportune time for the two leaders to show the world that the U.S. and China can again cooperate on subjects as important as North Korea. Both want North Korea to denuclearize, completely and verifiably, in return for security assurances and other deliverables. Progress with China on the issue of North Korea, on the twentieth anniversary of the Six-Party Talks, should be high on the list of priorities for President Joe Biden.
This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joe Detrani first appeared in The Washington Times
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