Marching with the Multitudes Protesting the Siege on Gaza
Signs of Our Times
Tens of thousands rallied in San Francisco on October 28 to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and then marched to disrupt traffic on the freeway to get the attention of an otherwise inattentive press. That demonstration joined multitudes globally protesting the on-going genocide.
Signs read, “You can’t hide genocide.” “Genocide Joe” placards connected the dots to the White House’s complicity with the collective punishment of civilians.
“Free Palestine!” signs proliferated. Another sign said, “America’s 9/11 is Palestine’s 24/7.”
“We are all Palestinians” signs voiced a message of solidarity and common humanity.
“US Jews say ceasefire now!” signs were prominent. A clear distinction was drawn between cultural Judaism and political Zionism. The latter weaponizes religion in service of settler colonialism and is an adjunct of US imperialism. The slogan “never again,” a reaction to the original genocide committed against the Jews, has taken on new meaning to anti-Zionist Jews protesting the current holocaust being perpetrated in their name.
Chants declared, “Free, free, free Palestine!” The streets echoed with “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
A lone hand-drawn sign captured the collective consciousness: “I thought a world would not allow a genocide – I was naïve.” Today, no illusions remain. The joined-at-the-hip US imperial/Zionist project is a scourge on humanity.
Signs of our times: “Stand with Palestine – End the Occupation NOW!”
Photographs and captions are by Roger D. Harris who is with the human rights group, Task Force on the Americas, founded in 1985.
Roger D. Harris is with the human rights organization Task Force on the Americas, founded in 1985. Read other articles by Roger D..What the BBC Fails to Tell You about
October 7
It is journalistic malpractice for the media to still be repeating so credulously the Israeli military’s account of that day
The BBC’s Lucy Williamson was taken once again this week to view the terrible destruction at a kibbutz community just outside Gaza attacked on October 7. As we have been shown so many times before, the Israeli homes were riddled with automatic fire, both inside and out. Sections of concrete wall had holes in them, or had collapsed entirely. And parts of the buildings that were still standing were deeply charred. It looked like a small snapshot of the current horrors in Gaza.
There is a possible reason for those similarities – one that the BBC is studiously failing to report, despite mounting evidence from a variety of sources, including the Israeli media. Instead the BBC is sticking resolutely to a narrative crafted for them, and the rest of the western media, by the Israeli military: that Hamas alone caused all this destruction.
Simply repeating that narrative without any caveats has by now reached the level of journalistic malpractice. And yet that is precisely what the BBC does night after night.
Just a cursory look at the wreckage in the various kibbutz communities that were attacked that day should raise questions in the mind of any good reporter. Were Palestinian militants in a position to actually inflict physical damage to that degree and extent with the kind of light weapons they carried?
And if not, who else was in a position to wreak such havoc other than Israel?
A separate question that good journalists ought to be asking is this: What was the purpose of such damage? What did the Palestinian militants hope to achieve by it?
The implicit answer the media is supplying is also the answer the Israeli military wants western publics to hear: that Hamas engaged in an orgy of gratuitious killing and savagery because … well, let’s say the quiet part out loud: because Palestinians are inherently savage.
With that as the implicit narrative, western politicians have been handed a licence to cheerlead Israel as it murders a Palestinian child in Gaza every few minutes. Savages only understand the language of savagery, after all.
Brutal tango
For this reason alone, any journalist who wishes to avoid colluding in the genocide unfolding in Gaza ought to be increasingly wary of simply repeating the Israeli military’s claims about what happened on October 7. Certainly, they should not credulously regurgitate the latest agitprop from the IDF press office, as the BBC is so evidently doing.
What we know from a growing body of evidence gleaned from the Israeli media and Israeli eyewitnesses – carefully laid out, for example, in this report from Max Blumenthal – is that the Israeli military was completely blindsided by that day’s events. Heavy artillery, including tanks and attack helicopters, was called in to deal with Hamas. That appears to have been a straightforward decision in regard to the military bases Hamas had overrun.
Israel has a long-standing policy of seeking to prevent Israeli soldiers from being taken captive – chiefly, because of the high price Israeli society insists on paying to ensure soldiers are returned. For decades, the military’s so-called “Hannibal procedure” has directed Israeli troops to kill fellow soldiers rather than allow them to be taken captive. For the same reason, Hamas expends a great deal of energy in trying to find innovative ways to seize soldiers.
The two sides are essentially engaged in a brutal tango in which each understands the other’s dance moves.
Given Hamas’ situation, effectively managing the Israeli-controlled concentration camp of Gaza, it has limited resistance strategies available to it. Capturing Israeli soldiers maximises its leverage. They can be traded for the release of many of the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held in jails inside Israel, in breach of international law. In addition, in the negotiations, Hamas usually hopes to win an easing of Israel’s 16-year siege of Gaza.
To avert this scenario, Israeli commanders reportedly called in the attack helicopters on the military bases overwhelmed by Hamas on October 7. The helicopters appear to have fired indiscriminately, despite the risk posed to the Israeli soldiers in the base who were still alive. Israel’s was a scorched-earth policy to stop Hamas achieving its aims. That may, in part, explain the very large proportion of Israeli soldiers among the 1,300 killed that day.
But what about the situation in the kibbutz communities? By the time the army arrived and was in position, Hamas was well dug in. It had taken the inhabitants as hostages inside their own homes. Israeli eyewitness testimony and media reports suggest Hamas was almost certainly trying to negotiate safe passage back into Gaza, using the Israeli civilians as human shields. The civilians were the Hamas fighters’ only ticket out, and they could be converted later into bargaining chips for the release of Palestinian prisoners.
The evidence – from Israeli media reports and eyewitnesses, as well as a host of visual clues from the crime scene itself – tell a far more complex story than the one presented nightly on the BBC.
Did the Israeli military fire into the Hamas-controlled civilian homes in the same fashion as it had fired into its own military bases, and with the same disregard for the safety of Israelis inside? Was the goal in each case to prevent at all costs Hamas taking hostages whose release would require a very high price from Israel?
Kibbutz Be’eri has been a favoured destination for BBC reporters keen to illustrate Hamas’ barbarity. It is where Lucy Williamson headed again this week. And yet none of her reporting highlighted comments made to the Israeli Haaretz newspaper by Tuval Escapa, the kibbutz’s security coordinator. He said Israeli military commanders had ordered the “shelling [of] houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages”.
That echoed the testimony of Yasmin Porat, who sought shelter in Be’eri from the nearby Nova music festival. She told Israeli Radio that once Israeli special forces arrived: “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages because there was very, very heavy crossfire.”
Are the images of charred bodies presented by Williamson, accompanied by a warning of their graphic, upsetting nature, incontrovertible proof that Hamas behaved like monsters, bent on the most twisted kind of vengeance? Or might those blackened remains be evidence that Israeli civilians and Hamas fighters burned alongside each other, after they were engulfed in flames caused by Israeli shelling of the houses?
Israel will not agree to an independent investigation so a definitive answer will never be forthcoming. But that does not absolve the media of their professional and moral duty to be cautious.
‘Hamas as savages’
Consider for a moment the stark contrast in the western media’s treatment of events on October 7 and its treatment of the strike on the car park at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in northern Gaza on October 17, in which hundreds of Palestinians were reported killed.
In the case of Al-Ahli, the media were only too ready to cast aside all the evidence that the hospital had been hit by an Israeli strike immediately Israel contested the claim. Instead journalists hurriedly amplified Israel’s counter-allegation that a Palestinian rocket had fallen on the hospital. Most of the media moved on after concluding “The truth may never be clear”, or even less credibly, that Palestinian militants were the most likely culprits.
In telling contrast, the western media have not been willing to raise even a single question about what happened on October 7. They have enthusiastically attributed every horror that day to Hamas. They have ignored the reality of utter chaos that reigned for many hours and the potential for poor, desperate and morally dubious decision-making by the Israeli military.
In fact, the media have gone much further. In advancing the narrative of “Hamas as savages”, they have promoted obvious fictions, such as the story that “Hamas beheaded 40 babies”. That piece of fake news was even taken up briefly by US President Joe Biden, before it was quietly walked back by his officials.
Similarly, it is still a popular throwaway line among the western commentariat that “Hamas carried out rapes”, though once again the allegation is evidence-free so far.
We should be clear. If Israel had serious evidence for either of these claims, it would be aggressively promoting it. Instead, it is doing the next best thing: letting innuendo gently sink into the audience’s subconscious, settling there as a prejudice that cannot be interrogated.
Hamas undoubtedly committed war crimes on October 7 – not least, by taking civilians as human shields. But that kind of crime is one we are familiar with, one “ordinary” enough that the Israel military has been regularly documented carrying it out too. The practice of Israeli soldiers taking Palestinians as human shields goes under various names, such as the “neighbour procedure” and the “early warning procedure”.
Worse atrocities may have happened too, especially given the unexpected scale of Hamas’ success in breaking out of Gaza. Large numbers of Palestinians escaped the enclave, some of them doubtless armed civilians with no connection to the operation. In such circumstances, it would be surprising if there were no examples of the headline-grabbing atrocities being committed.
The issue is whether such atrocities were planned and systematic, as Israel claims and the western media repeats, or examples of rogue actions by individuals or groups. If the latter, Israel would be in no position to judge. Israel’s own history is littered with examples of such crimes, including the documented case of an Israeli army unit taking captive a Bedouin girl in 1949 and repeatedly gang-raping her.
Savagery would certainly not be a uniquely Hamas trait. Following the October 7 attack, videos have been emerging of systematic abuses of any Hamas fighters captured, whether alive or dead. Images show them being beaten and tortured in public for the gratification of onlookers, when there is clearly not even the pretence of information gathering. Others show the bodies of Hamas fighters being defiled and mutilated.
No one can claim the moral high ground here.
What the media’s uncritical promotion of Israel’s “Hamas as savages” narrative has achieved is something sinister – and all too familiar from the West’s long colonial history. It has been used to demonise a whole people, presenting them either as barbarians or as the willing protectors and enablers of barbarism.
The “savages” narrative is being weaponised by Israel to justify its mounting campaign of atrocities in Gaza. Which is why it is so important that journalists don’t simply allow themselves to be spoonfed. Far too much is at stake.
Hamas committed war crimes on October 7 on a scale that is unprecedented for any Palestinian group. But there is little more than Israeli narrative spin so far to suggest that there was an unparalleled depravity to Hamas’ actions. Certainly from what we know, it is hard to see that anything Hamas did that day was worse, or more savage, than what Israel has been doing daily in Gaza for weeks.
And Israel’s actions – from bombing Palestinian families to starving them of food and water – has the blessing of every major western politician.
Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, Israel is a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). Read other articles by Jonathan, or visit Jonathan's website.Biden and Congress: Ask the American People Before You Impose a Genocide Tax for Prosperous Israel
Dear Congressional Leaders Sen. Schumer, Rep. Johnson, Sen. McConnell and Rep. Jeffries:
We strongly urge Congress to hold public hearings, with testimony from a broad range of witnesses, before voting on President Biden’s request for an additional $14.3 billion in military funding to further subsidize Israel’s overwhelming military superiority over Hamas in the war that erupted on October 7, 2023.
We believe these questions, among others, should be examined:
1. Why should American taxpayers pay for Israeli military spending incurred because of its stupendous intelligence failure and ongoing genocidal war?
2. Does Israel need the additional aid since the United States already provides Israel $3-4 billion annually and statutorily guarantees it “a qualitative military advantage” over its neighbors?
3. Can the United States afford the $14.3 billion in additional spending with a national debt soaring past $33 trillion, and annual trillion-dollar budget deficits?
4. Israel is among the top 20 global economies in terms of GDP per capita. Could the $14.3 billion be better spent on assisting the world’s 71 million impoverished internally displaced refugees, many created by undeclared, lawless, U.S. wars?
5. Would the military subsidies make the United States even more of a co-belligerent with Israel in a war against Hamas and, under international law, legally responsible for war crimes or genocide?
6. Should the additional $14.3 billion in deficit or unpaid-for funding be conditioned on Israel’s compliance with the laws of war and the Genocide Convention as certified under oath by the President, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense with an accompanying written explanation? All of these officials have urged the Israeli government to “comply with the laws of war.”
7. How did the Biden Administration come up with the outsized figure of $14.3 billion for a prosperous economic, technological, and military superpower having a greater social safety net for its people than the United States?
Asking the American people for their advice on sending $14.3 billion to Israel for its acknowledged, defense blunders is not difficult. Conservative Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie polled 49,000 people from his impoverished state. They registered overwhelming opposition to sending these billions of dollars for Israel’s daily slaughter of the civilians in Gaza, nearly half of whom are children.
Disaster is courted when the United States races to begin or join military conflicts without measured, sober second thoughts born of hearings and debates that entertain diverse views. The House held no hearings on the ill-fated Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 which expanded the Vietnam War. The Resolution passed unanimously with but 40 minutes of debate. Senate action was only modestly less rash in voting 98-2 to open the gates to a trillion-dollar military disaster.
Congress never inquired whether the Executive Branch’s dubious Domino Theory was fantasy. Indeed, Vietnam today is an ally of the United States.
Congress held no hearings before approving the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) with but one dissenting vote, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA). After spending more than $2 trillion fighting the Taliban over 20 years, the United States de facto conceded defeat in 2021 with an even more militant version of the Taliban now in power in Afghanistan.
Such hearings will not place Israel in jeopardy. Hamas is no existential threat. And all the world can see Israel pulverizing Gaza daily, including its civilian population, half of whom are children, with brutal air and land attacks on critical civilian infrastructure.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader, Esq.
Bruce Fein, Esq.
Israel Is Now the Greatest Source of Anti-Semitism
On October 28, Craig Mokhiber, the Director of the New York Office of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote to the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) in Geneva (and I here, in boldface, add a few links for documentation of some of his assertions):
This will be my last official communication to you. …
The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions, are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms [against Arabs] are accompanied by Israeli military units.
Across the land, Apartheid rules.
This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, [Jewish] settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations “to ensure respect” for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities. …
We must begin now or surrender to unspeakable horror. I see ten essential points: 1. Legitimate action: First, we in the UN must abandon the failed (and largely disingenuous) Oslo paradigm, its illusory two-state solution, its impotent and complicit Quartet, and its subjugation of international law to the dictates of presumed political expediency. Our positions must be unapologetically based on international human rights and international law. 2. Clarity of Vision: We must stop the pretense that this is simply a conflict over land or religion between two warring parties and admit the reality of the situation in which a disproportionately powerful state is colonizing, persecuting, and dispossessing an indigenous population on the basis of their ethnicity. 3. One State based on human rights: We must support the establishment of a single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and, therefore, the dismantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land. …
Israelis learned well from Hitler: they elected governments that did (or else condoned doing) to the non-Jewish natives in their land (who before 1948 were 61% Muslim, 30% Jewish, and 8% Christian), what Hitler had done to Jews in Christian Europe — and now they are being supported by the U.S. and its allies to deliver Israel’s final solution to the Palestinian problem: extermination.
The self-defense by Israel and its apologists, for this reality that drove Mokhiber to quit and to condemn them, is for them to ignore all of that reality, and to focus instead upon the responses to it by the Palestinians. The self-defense, in other words, is to condemn not the side that started this war (themselves) beginning in 1948, but the side that then, and even earlier (in the late 1930s), were trying to prevent or avoid it (the Palestinians). The evil in this deception by the perpetrators — by the Israelis and their apologists — is obvious, and here is how it is driving a surge in anti-Semitism:
Israel and its apologists say that anti-Israelism is the same thing as anti-Semitism (so that to condemn Israel is to condemn all Jews), but here they lie yet again because outside of Israel are many Jews who loathe what Israel has been doing in their names. The very idea that all Jews are Israelis, or even support the Israelis and oppose the Palestinians in this war between the aggressor (Israelis) and the defender (the Palestinians), is stupid. That idea simply is not the case; but yet many Jews are being targeted by AUTHENTIC anti-Semites as-if it WERE the case.
Comments by many readers and viewers online are rife with such anti-Semitism, and the global community of that authentic anti-Semitism grows ever-larger, the closer that Israel and the U.S. get to delivering their final solution to the Palestinian problem. A great many of these anti-Semitic comments are coming from individuals who condemn all Jews on the basis of anti-Semitic lines from the New Testament (such as John 8:44, Matthew 23:31-38, and the earliest-written one of them all, 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 — all of which lines I have discussed here). However, many come instead from the Old Testament, which historians consider to be mythical but theologians and preachers believe instead to be “the Word of God”; and, so, scholars cannot agree with one-another on what is history and what in the Old Testament is instead merely myth (religious propaganda, for spreading the Jewish faith).
According to Wikipedia’s article on the “Kingdom of Judah“:
Centered in the highlands of Judea, the kingdom’s capital was Jerusalem.[3] Jews are named after Judah and are primarily descended from it.[4][5] The Hebrew Bible depicts the Kingdom of Judah as a successor to the United Kingdom of Israel, a term denoting the united monarchy under biblical kings Saul, David and Solomon and covering the territory of Judah and Israel. However, during the 1980s, some biblical scholars began to argue that the archaeological evidence for an extensive kingdom before the late-8th century BCE is too weak, and that the methodology used to obtain the evidence is flawed.[6][7] In the 10th and early 9th centuries BCE, the territory of Judah appears to have been sparsely populated, limited to small rural settlements, most of them unfortified.[8]
and Wikipedia’s “Davidic line” says that,
as for David and his immediate descendants themselves, the position of some scholars, as described by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman, authors of The Bible Unearthed, espouses that David and Solomon may well be based on “certain historical kernels”, and probably did exist in their own right, but their historical counterparts simply could not have ruled over a wealthy lavish empire as described in the Bible, and were more likely chieftains of a comparatively modest Israelite society in Judah and not regents over a kingdom proper.[27]
If the actual historical nation of Israel was ONLY what is shown on the map as constituting the Kingdom of Judah, then neither Gaza nor the northern two-thirds of the West Bank had ever been in any ancient Israel; and, so, anyone who says that the Jews in 1948 were ‘coming home’ to ‘Israel’ is historically wrong. However, those Jews were ethnically cleansing the land. It’s well-documented, such as here, here, here, and here. And even if ancient Israel had included all of the land that now is Israel, it wasn’t so at all in recent centuries, when virtually all of the residents there were Muslims and Christians — though Jews were demanding to control it while being only a tiny percentage of the population there. Their supremacism was clearly not only fascist but racist; it was Jewish Nazism. Furthermore, during the 1930s, Zionists considered themselves to be fascists; and fascists in both Germany and Italy considered Zionists to be Jewish fascists, ideological brothers of both Italy’s and Germany’s fascists (Christianity’s fascists). And Albert Einstein and other prominent progressive Jews in the U.S. after World War II described as “fascists” Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, both of whom subsequently became elected by Israel’s Jews to lead Israel. And yet the U.S. Government backed them, not only when Begin and Shamir were leading massacres of Arab villages in the 1940s, but when both men became Israel’s leaders in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s — and afterward, under their political follower Benjamin Netanyahu: clearly, a racist-supremacist apartheid regime ever since its founding, a regime which defines the supreme group, “Jew,” not only by religion, but by descent; that is, racially. Under U.S. President Harry S. Truman, the America and the world that his predecessor Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who was against the formation of a Jewish state and even resisted his aides who backed Churchill’s strong support for the creation of Israel, and who also was opposed to Winston Churchill’s and Dwight Eisenhower’s urgings for a war against the Soviet Union) had sought and carefully planned — the world that FDR had been intensively working to build — abruptly ended. And, more than anything else, this is the reason why, on 28 October 2023, the Director of the New York Office of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote to the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) in Geneva, to resign his post. He resigned his post because now the final solution to the Palestinian problem — the problem that Truman and his successors enabled fascist Jews to create — is about to come to a head. And decent Jews everywhere will be experiencing the backlash from what the indecent ones — who are the majority in Israel — are doing. The decent Jews will be getting the backlash for what the indecent ones are doing, but the blame really should go ONLY to the Israelis, and to the UK and U.S. billionaires (and their politicians and ‘news’-media) who have been constantly propagandizing for them.
Eric Zuesse is an investigative historian. His new book, America's Empire of Evil: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. Read other articles by Eric.Sabrina Haake
November 6, 2023
Parents and children hold a Teddy bear protest and vigil in George Square demanding a ceasefire to protect the children of Gaza on Nov. 1, 2023, in Glasgow, Scotland. The head of the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) said recently that more than 70% of the reported dead in Gaza have been women and children since the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel on October 7. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Hand-painted protest signs declaring “Israel can’t bomb its way to peace,” serve up palliative if elliptic logic for a Gaza cease fire. Continued violence guarantees violence will continue, a heart-wrenching Israeli/Palestinian pas de deux stuck on replay since 1948.
And yet, calling for an Israeli ceasefire is like telling someone to drop his gun while the psychopath who just murdered his family is still in the house. Hamas terrorists, likely armed by Iran and Russia, are committed to Israel’s complete annihilation, and they have the house surrounded.
America’s left, admirably quick to reject false binary choices in other settings, needs to reject the oppressor versus oppressed paradigm in Gaza. Two, three and 30 things can be true at the same time.
Allies urged Israel to engage in a proportional response
For religious zealotry, economic inequality and other key ingredients of radicalization, no other region in the world compares to the Middle East. Under Hamas rule, life in Gaza, one of the poorest places on earth, was described as “hell” long before Hamas’ sadistic attack on Israel.
As the world watches the humanitarian disaster unfolding — death from thirst and disease threatens to kill untold innocents — Israel’s allies expect the Jewish state to limit the deaths of innocent civilians to the extent possible, even while supporting its right to self-protection. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said early in the conflict hat the way Israel defends itself matters. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen echoed Blinken, saying, “Europe stands with Israel…(but) how Israel responds will show that it is a democracy.”
The Biden administration, becoming more critical of Israel’s strategy as Gaza’s death toll rises, has urged Israel to be “surgical” while seeking a humanitarian pausein the shelling — requests that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, so far, appears to reject.
Support for Israel, coupled with support for innocent Palestinians, reflects the International Humanitarian Law of proportional response.
In 1949, the fourth Geneva convention was adopted in response to Adolf Hitler’s atrocities against civilians, reflecting signatories’ agreement to limit harm to non-combatants in time of war. The Charter of the United Nations and its collective security mechanisms similarly approve “proportional” and necessary responses, while also seeking to limit harm to civilian populations.
Hamas has manipulated proportional response expectations
Weighing the proportionality of Israel’s response is inordinately complex, requiring nuanced considerations that defy simple placard narratives.
What violence could Israel — or any nation — dream up that would be “disproportional” to decapitated children? Does proportional justice allow an eye for an eye – and worse, as we are seeing in Gaza — if that is the only way to dismantle terrorists’ infrastructure?
Does the calculus of proportionality change if leaders of both sides, over decades, have intentionally negotiated/failed to negotiate a solution in such a way that left dispossessed Palestinians hopeless and desperate? And what tribunal of public opinion is informed and objective enough to assess, weigh and assign numeric value to the sincerity of each side’s peace attempts over the past 75 years?
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Putting a pin in the long history of this saga, Israel’s self-defense today requires it to identify and track Hamas operatives, locate and destroy Hamas’ hidden supplies of weapons — including rockets and missile-launching hardware — and permanently destroy Hamas’ underground tunnels and communications networks, all while an anxious world watches it for any strategic overreach.
Hamas preemptively amplified the outcry of “disproportional response” by deliberately housing terrorists with innocent Gazan families and disbursing terrorist cells throughout hospitals, schools, mosques and apartment buildings. Hamas terrorists installed combatants among civilian populations throughout Gaza precisely because they knew the world would watch and condemn civilian deaths. Nihilistic and cynical, yes, but also an accurate calculation.
Kibbutz Nir Oz resident Hadas Kalderon, whose children have been taken hostage, and her mother and niece killed, breaks down in tears while looking through the burnt out home of her late mother Rina Sutzkever on Oct. 30, 2023 in Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel. More than three weeks since Hamas's Oct 7 attacks in Israel, which killed 1,400 according to Israeli authorities, just over half have now been laid to rest.
As images of desperate Gazans proliferate, how relevant is it that Hamas deliberately used their bodies as shields? To thirsty parents carrying thirsty children 12 miles south to sleep in tents in southern Gaza, where the fear of being bombed into oblivion still remains ever-present, does it really matter who threw the first punch?
Palestinian civilians are not Hamas
The left loses credibility by equating Hamas with Palestinians. Although the right also conflates Hamas with Palestinians’ ethnicity, they do it to punish all Palestinians, to advance the same race/crime narrative they promote in the U.S. The left should know better. It is just as racist, ignorant and dangerous for the left to defend Hamas terror on the basis of ethnic grievance as it is for the right to blame an entire ethnicity- Palestinians- for the crimes of a few.
Whether from the left or right, attempts to equate Palestinians with Hamas reveal historical ignorance. Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza strip in 2007 from the Palestinian Authority, by taking its political rival Fatah’s headquarters by bloody force, and has since maintained a stranglehold of power over the Gazan people. The citizens have not had an election since.
Celebrating Hamas’ terror attacks against Israel as political “resistance” is a short-sighted game that can only be played when the violence is “over there,” not in your own house. Does anyone justifying Hamas’ violence in Israel support the rise of political violence on the U.S. right?
Logistics and history add even more complexity. Gaza is a densely packed and stacked concrete jungle cramming 2.3 million Palestinians into an area only five miles wide and 25 miles long; blockades from Israel and Egypt have added to the misery.
Long before Hamas’ most recent attack, electricity and running water were sporadic, and public education relied on double-shifts because there were so few schools under Hamas rule.
Israel, meanwhile, is a conundrum of complexity. Hamas slaughtered hundreds of innocent Israelis even as they were striving to help the Palestinians. Israeli humanitarian organizations working for Palestinian rights abound, including the Rabbis for Human Rights, the Coalition of Women for Peace, the Ir Shalem co-existence program and countless similar organizations. These progressive allies — including young people at a concert for peace — were brutally slaughtered, proving that Hamas’ bloodlust eclipsed any interest in improving Palestinians’ lives long ago.
A soldier’s sad lament
As many Israeli Defense Forces soldiers have made clear, they are fighting to defend their loved ones in Israel but they do not see oppressed Palestinian civilians as the enemy.
Nir Avishai Cohen, a major in the reserves of the Israel Defense Forces called from Texas to return to fight in Gaza, wrote a compelling essay about his sorrow and frustration:
For 56 years Israel has been subjecting Palestinians to oppressive military rule. ... A Messianic religious minority has dragged us into a muddy swamp, and we
are following them …
Palestinians aren’t the enemy. The millions of Palestinians who live right here next to us, between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan, are not our enemy.
Just like the majority of Israelis want to live a calm, peaceful and dignified life, so do Palestinians. Israelis and Palestinians alike have been in the grip of a religious minority for decades. On both sides, the intractable positions of a small group have dragged us into violence. It doesn’t matter who is more cruel or more ruthless.
The ideologies of both have fueled this conflict, leading to the deaths of too many innocent civilians…
May their memories be a blessing
Aside from reducing the risk of future terrorist attacks, eradicating Hamas could provide an opening for a legitimate Palestinian government that, for once, invests its resources in the neglected lives of Palestinians instead of weapons of death and mass destruction.
But the deaths in Gaza will be meaningless, and guarantee bloodshed for years if not decades to come, if Palestinians can’t see a just and peaceful path toward self-governance after the bombing ends. If the U.S. is a true friend to Israel, and a true adherent to international law, it must make that point crystal clear.
Innocent Palestinians deserve our compassion and an understanding of the geopolitical complexities that govern them. So do innocent Israelis.
After an unthinkable number of lives have been shattered, may the memories of the dead on both sides be a blessing — and a catalyst — for lasting peace.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25-year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Follow her on Substack.
David Edwards
November 5, 2023
Fox News/screen grab
Fox News hosts Rachel Campos-Duffy and Pete Hegseth disagreed over whether the deaths of innocent people in Gaza were "worth" reporting.
During a Sunday discussion about Israel's war in Gaza, Hegseth downplayed civilian deaths. But Campos-Duffy was concerned about "unnecessary" killing.
"And you hope, and you hope that Israel does as much as it can to avoid, you know, unnecessary [deaths]," Campos-Duffy said.
"They're doing that," Hegseth gasped.
"But it's worth saying," Campos-Duffy offered.
"It's not even worth saying because they're doing that," Hegseth huffed.
"I'm not on the ground, so I don't know what they're doing and not doing," Campos-Duffy opined. "I'm saying it's okay to say let's hope that non-combatants are protected, that children are as protected as they can, and that they are allowed to exit."
"Somebody tell that to Hamas," Heseth griped. "I mean, it's why the wars never end. It's because we tap dance, and we tap dance, and we criticize our own team."
"I'm not tap dancing," Campos-Duffy replied. "I'm just, I refuse to lose my humanity in this debate."
Watch the video below
CNN's Bash confronts combative Israeli official for denying Gaza 'humanitarian crisis'
Tom Boggioni
November 5, 2023
Dana Bash, Gilad Erdan (CNN screenshot)
On Sunday Morning's "State of the Union," CNN host Dana Bash was taken aback when Israel's ambassador to the United Nations flatly denied there is a "humanitarian crisis" in the war-torn Gaza Strip.
Bash got right into it with Ambassador Gilad Erdan, asking about the recent retaliatory attacks on Gaza that are leading to mass Palestinian casualties, which led to the Israeli official to reply, "There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza," before adding, “We allow the number of trucks entering Gaza now with food and medicines to reach almost 100 trucks every day, so we don't see the need for humanitarian pauses right now."
'You've said this before, there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, that's kind of an amazing statement," Bash countered before adding, "Because there were humanitarian problems there before the war, and now, obviously, it has gotten bad. Take their numbers aside — it has gotten to the crisis point."
"No, I'm not saying that the life in Gaza is great and obviously Hamas is the only one who should be held accountable for any situation in Gaza," he shot back after attempting to interrupt the CNN host. "But there's a standard, due to international humanitarian law, what does it mean, a humanitarian crisis?"
"And I'm saying again, there is no humanitarian crisis based on international humanitarian law in Gaza," he continued while noting some Gazans were filmed using their cell phones and were seen watching a movie.
"All of those things could be true at the same time," Bash pointed out. "So if Israel and the government wants to maintain credibility, is denying that there is a humanitarian crisis inside Gaza the way to do it?"
'I'm not denying the humanitarian situation in Gaza is very bad," Erdan complained. "And it's very sad that for 16 years, Hamas exploited all the money that was transferred to Gaza, instead of investing it to build hospitals or desalination -- water desalination power plants, only to turn Gaza into a war machine. -- it's very sad. But Israel shouldn't be held accountable for this situation."
Watch below or at the link
Rep. Rashida Tlaib is facing backlash from some her fellow Democrats, including from her state of Michigan, over her recent remarks on Palestine amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Tlaib, who is Palestinian American and one of just three Muslim members of Congress, posted a video to the social media site X on Friday featuring footage of pro-Palestine protests from across the country, as well as remarks from President Joe Biden expressing his support of Israel. The video ends with Tlaib saying, "We will remember in 2024," followed by text: “Joe Biden supported the genocide of the Palestinian people."
In another tweet, Tlaib wrote: “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate. My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.”
Democrats swiftly decried Tlaib’s remarks on Palestine over the weekend.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., slammed Tlaib’s “from the river to the sea” remark in a tweet Sunday: “This phrase means eradicating Israel and Jews. Period. Dressing it up in a new PR ploy won’t change that. Only a return of hostages, eliminating Hamas and liberating Gaza from oppressive terror will save civilian lives and secure the peace, justice and dignity you seek.”
Michigan Senate President Pro Tem Jeremy Moss suggested Tlaib’s tweet was insensitive to Jewish people: “This is not how Jews view the phrase ‘from the river to the sea.’ This is not how Hamas views the phrase ‘from the river to the sea,’" he wrote on X.
“Hamas uses it as a rallying cry,” he added. “And they don’t simply want to displace Jews in Israel. They want Jews dead.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel decried Tlaib’s tweet as “hurtful”: “.@RashidaTlaib, I have supported and defended you countless times, even when you have said the indefensible, because I believed you to be a good person whose heart was in the right place.”
“But this is so hurtful to so many,” she added. “Please retract this cruel and hateful remark.”
THIS IS A ZIONIST TROPE
THAT FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA IS A HAMAS SLOGAN
IT IS A PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE SLOGAN
Michigan state Rep. Noah Arbit, tweeted that he found Tlaib’s comments to be “disturbing”: “It is disturbing and enraging that Jewish communities in Southfield, Franklin, Bingham Farms, Beverly Hills and beyond are represented by someone who adopts wholesale the call for the State of Israel to be wiped from the map, necessitating the elimination of 8 million Jews.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., noted that Tlaib is a “friend” before criticizing her remarks on Palestine in an interview on CNN on Sunday: “President Obama just said the other day, I think, quite correctly — and we all got to deal with it — this is an enormously complex issue.”
“And slogans like the river to the sea, if that means the destruction of Israel, that’s not going to work,” he added. “People who are saying, Israel, right or wrong, we’re for you all the way, that’s not going to work. This is a horrendously complex issue.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. — the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who has warned Biden about his support for Israel and called for a ceasefire — on Sunday declined to side with Tlaib’s claim of the president supporting a “genocide” in an interview on MSNBC's “Inside with Jen Psaki.”
“I am not willing to say that yet," Jayapal said when asked if she agrees with Tlaib's remark, "but I will just tell you that Rashida is not the first person to say this.”
Jayapal added: “There are credible reports from agencies across the world. And, you know, the United Nations has said we are hurtling towards the genocide of Palestinians. That is not an isolated view.”
Tlaib's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Democratic criticism of Tlaib mounted as Israel said it would press on with its offensive in Gaza despite appeals from the U.S. and other countries for a pause to get aid to civilians. More than 1.4 million people have been displaced in Gaza, and health officials there say more than 9,700 have died. Israel says 1,400 people were killed in the Hamas attack, and more than 200 are still being held hostage.
In response to Tlaib’s latest comments, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said she would reintroduce a resolution to censure the Michigan Democrat after her initial effort to do so was defeated by a bipartisan majority last week.
Greene said Tlaib’s embrace of the slogan was equivalent to “calls for genocide of our great friend and ally Israel.” The Anti-Defamation League has previously labeled the chant promoted by Tlaib as “an antisemitic charge.”
Referring to the 23 Republicans who voted with Democrats against the resolution on Wednesday, Greene said she would remove the language "insurrection" and replace it with "illegal occupation. The censure resolution that Greene filed last month accused Tlaib of inciting an insurrection in a House office building.
On Oct. 18., hundreds of protestors filled the Cannon House Office Building to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. A Capitol Police spokesperson said that to the best of their knowledge, everyone went through security and entered the complex the proper way.
Tlaib didn’t attend the protest indoors, a source familiar with the matter previously told NBC News, but she delivered remarks at a rally with the demonstrators outside the Capitol.
After voting against her resolution to censure Tlaib, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, pointed out Greene’s history of antisemitic remarks, including that she had suggested that a “laser beam” controlled by a wealthy Jewish family was behind deadly wildfires in California in 2018.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
What Does LandBack Have to Do with the War Against Palestine?
As horrible as Zionist atrocities against Palestinians are, we must not forget the fact that they reflect events that have happened for decades and that will continue to happen. They are the current chapter in repeated parades of mass extermination which have characterize capitalism since its birth.
A recurring theme in the campaigns has been landgrabs, or the seizure of land occupied by people who have been living there for centuries or millennia. With this in mind, the Green Party of St. Louis (GP StL) decided to point to the strong connection between the criminal occupation of Palestine and the LandBack movement on its website, in its speeches and in its flyers.
LandBack was introduced in 2018 by Arnell Tailfeathers of the Blackfoot Confederacy. [Land Back has been percolating since, at least, the publication of the Red Paper in 1970, led by Indigenous leader Harold Cardinal in Canada. The Red Paper has been updated and republished by the Yellowhead Institute. — DV ed] The movement called for Native Americans in the US and Canada for to regain their ancestral lands. The idea quickly spread to Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and even Fiji.
LandBack could easily encompass the 104 million Adivasi of India, Native cultures throughout Latin America, and peoples across Africa who have been driven out of their homes for corporate farming, fossil fuel extraction, and desecration of land for “green” energy minerals.
Today, there is no place more justified for LandBack than Palestine, where Israeli “settlers” (with military backing) have pushed them off their land and slaughtered them for generations.
According to the LandBack manifesto “Our struggle is interconnected with the struggles of all oppressed Peoples. It is a future where Black reparations and Indigenous LANDBACK coexist. We are the land.”
Going far beyond economics, LandBack sees land as tied to culture – regaining land is central to efforts by the colonized to assert their existence. It advocates decolonization, dismantling white supremacy, and reclaiming stewardship to save their land,
Palestinian efforts to regain their land can become a spark to mobilize LandBack across the globe.
Whose Lives Matter?
Colonizers inevitably dehumanized their victims, whether enslaving Africans or thieving indigenous land. Racist slurs permeated the capitalist conquest of those they deemed “inferior.”
One of the current dehumanization fads is saving the word “terrorist” for those who assert their human rights. Corporate media never portray the Israeli Defense Force as “terrorist,” although it has waged countless military attacks on Palestinians during the past 75 years. The only way that this makes sense is by assuming that “Palestinian Lives Do Not Matter.”
After a Benjamin Netanyahu aide admitted that Israeli forces targeted a hospital for over 500 murders to supposedly attack a Hamas base, Joe Biden swore his support for Israel. He sides with Netanyahu no matter how many Palestinians Israel kills. Biden claims to be humanitarian while acting like “Palestinian Lives Do Not Matter.”
Genocidal Landgrab of Palestine
Genocide of a people includes both their physical elimination and the extermination of their culture, their ways of living, their ties to the land, their customs, the things they hold sacred. US and Canadian “Indian schools” that forced children to cut their hair and speak English were just one way that Western powers have screeched at other peoples that their cultures are too worthless to be preserved.
The Balfour Declaration, which set the stage for partitioning Palestine, was based on the assumption that Israel would eventually drive out the people who lived there. It was a scheme for slow but certain genocide of Palestinians.
Biden is at least as guilty for committing genocide against Palestinians as is Netanyahu or Trump. All three join together to do whatever it takes to eliminate Palestinians and peoples across the globe who are in the way of landgrabs.
Palestine Is the World
Israel teaches police in other countries techniques for brutalizing their populations while the US media toys with molding public opinion by demonizing the victim as the criminal. The attack on Gaza is both a real time massacre and a dress rehearsal for crushing those who challenge Western hegemony or who live atop fossil fuels or minerals for alternative energy.
Struggles for human lives, freedom, and land are global. Palestine, Venezuela and Cuba are just three of the dozens of countries that the US is seeking to strangle via sanctions and invasions. In the 2024 elections the Republicans and Democrats will compete to see which can be more vicious.
The Green Party of St. Louis showed its dedication to human liberation when it affirmed the following:
First, the current genocidal campaign against Palestine is not a “stand alone” issue. The Zionist slaughter is a part of the over 500 year efforts of colonial capitalism to destroy anyone who stands in the way of corporate economic growth.
Second, there cannot be “equal blame” for both sides. The solution for the crisis must begin with Israel’s withdrawing from occupied territories, acknowledging its criminal history, and providing reparations to its victims.
Don Fitz (fitzdon@aol.com) is on the Editorial Board of Green Social Thought, where a version of this article originally appeared. He was the 2016 candidate of the Missouri Green Party for Governor. He is author of Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution (2020). Read other articles by Don.
Denying the Security of the Oppressed Imperils the Security of the Oppressor
Presumably, if Israeli Jews were not occupying the majority of historical Palestine, laying siege to Gaza, oppressing, humiliating, dehumanizing, liquidating, and refusing statehood to the Palestinian people that Hamas, a Palestinian resistance, would not have been driven to launch an attack on Israelis.
Placing the Palestinians under oppression, occupation, and siege was an undeniable denial of security for Palestinians.
Thus, by denying the security of Palestinians, Israeli Jews were putting their own security at risk by fomenting a justifiable resistance. The Ukrainians and NATO are aware of this as well now. By threatening the security of the Russian state, Russia was forced to react. Hamas was also forced to react.
The choice was stark for Palestinians: continue to live with bowed head and on bended knee or risk their lives resisting oppression. Hamas refused to live on bended knee.
Now Jews elsewhere are incurring a backlash as a consequence of the self-designated Jewish State carrying out open genocide. As the JTA laments, “Dutch Jews are afraid to show their Jewishness right now.” Feelings borne of insecurity.
*****
Former US marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter has come to realize the dark criminality of the Israeli state. Ritter deserves commendation for switching his stance, as all morally based thinkers do when their previously held position was found to be based on inaccurate information or was untenable for whatever reason.
Nonetheless, from a 1 November 2023 interview, I have minor quibbles with part of the interview with Ritter. First, the interview begins by terming the warring between Israel and Hamas as a “conflict” which is grossly misleading. The term “conflict” originated with the interviewer. Ritter did not challenge this, and he also referred to it as a “conflict” himself but put it in a proper perspective. Genocide is not a “conflict.” It is a monstrous war crime. Second, Ritter states that Israel made a mistake by not recognizing Palestinian statehood. Fine, when considered solely from the Zionist perspective. However, in a previous interview together with journalist Eva Bartlett just a few days earlier, Ritter agreed with Bartlett humbly confessing, “I was late to the [pro-Palestinian] movement and shame on me for articulating support for a two state solution.” [around 59:30] To be fair, Ritter did not articulate support for a two-state solution, but he did argue that it would have been in the best interests of Israel.
Too often I hear and read about progressives — for example, Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky — speaking in favor of the two-state solution, a solution that rewards the oppressors. In April 2023, Chomsky said,
I understand the reasoning of the one-state advocates, but I think … it’s almost inconceivable that Israel will ever agree to destroy itself and become a Jewish minority population in a Palestinian-dominated state, which is what the demography indicates. And there’s no international support for it. Nothing. So my own personal feeling is the real options are ‘Greater Israel’, or move towards some kind of two-state arrangement. [emphasis added]
Finkelstein echoes Chomsky to a large extent in criticizing the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement :
They don’t want Israel,” Finkelstein declared, “They think they’re being very clever. They call it their three tiers… We want the end of the occupation, we want the right of return, and we want equal rights for Arabs in Israel. And they think they are very clever, because they know the result of implementing all three is what? What’s the result? You know and I know what’s the result: there’s no Israel.”
Finkelstein demanded that Palestinians drop this programme, “Because, if we end the occupation and bring back six million Palestinians and we have equal rights for Arabs and Jews, there’s no Israel.”
Having “equal rights for Arabs and Jews” in Israel/historical Palestine! How terrible is that?
It seems these two gentlemen do not first and foremost seek justice for Palestinians, but instead they prioritize preserving a state for Jews.
Even if it were to be a two-state solution, what would the two states look like? Chomsky and Finkelstein advocate for the 1967 borders — again rewarding the Jewish land grab over and above the land granted by the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947.
Since Chomsky and Finkelstein are both anarchists, they might both emulate John Lennon and propose a zero-state solution.
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
— John Lennon, “Imagine”
Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Read other articles by Kim.
Israel’s Big Lie of “Self-Defence”
An occupier does not have the right to use arms in “self-defence.”
Is the mass slaughter of civilians self-defence? Every person has the right to life and to self-defence, but Israel’s “right to self-defence” is constantly being used to obfuscate the non-defensive nature of its military violence in Palestinian territory. Israel’s self-defence is a lie, not just because their actions are not defensive but because Israel cannot legally use its military in self-defence against Palestinians. Let me repeat that, Israel cannot legally use its military against Palestinians in self-defence. That is the big lie at the heart of the current horrors
There are four reasons why Israel cannot cite a legal right to self defence in response to Palestinian violence. First and foremost is that the ability of a very strong military power to achieve anything defensive by the attrition of a much weaker military power is spurious and leads into the genocidal logic of attempting to deprive a people of all capacity for violence.
The second reason is that Israel is actively contravening UN Security Council resolutions and the UN Charter is very clear on the fact that the right to self-defence exists “until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” A state that works to thwart UNSC measures to maintain peace and security cannot logically be extended the unimpaired right to self defence.
On the third count Israel is an occupying power and the occupied have a legal right to armed resistance. It would be nonsensical to accord a legal right to use arms to defend against another’s legal resistance. Fourthly, it would be equally paradoxical to allow each party to act in self-defence against each other’s acts of self defence. Thus one of the parties must be the aggressor. On several counts, not least its defiance of UNSC resolutions, Israel must be considered the aggressor.
Israel’s only legitimate way of defending itself begins with ending its occupation. Israelis have a right to life and they deserve peace and security as we all do, but they have no right to kill Palestinians and claim that they are pursuing those things.
Before tackling the specifics we should question the general validity of military violence as a form of self-defence. At this time hundreds of people are killed by Israel every day under the pretext of seeking to render Hamas 100% ineffective. This is a tacit claim of self-defence linked to the notion that Hamas is an ongoing source of potential violence to Israelis. However, it is hard to reconcile this rationale with the actualities when one sees a parade of children’s corpses. One body after another with the increasingly familiar pall of concrete dust on their lifeless faces. Thinking of all of that pain, fear and suffering should make it impossible to somehow see killing those children as an act of self-defence. The human instinct to reject this monstrosity is not mere sentimentality. It would be impossible to make a sound detailed argument to show how the killing of any one of these children contributed materially to the increased security of Israelis. In truth it is far easier to argue that each dead Palestinian child makes Israeli people less secure.
Israel relies on broad and vague notions of “self-defence” to enact mass violence that does nothing to make any person safer and, in fact, is certain to cost the lives of many Israel personnel and any number of hostages. Military violence can only achieve so much as no amount of attrition will deprive a people of all ability to commit violence in return short of extermination. Beyond a point violence becomes waged “not merely against states and their armies but against peoples”.
These were the words of Raphel Lemkin when he first described the concept of genocide. Military violence can be used in ways that can only be called “self-defence” through the logic of genocide that situates the threat within the people and their intrinsic capacity for violence (also known as resistance). This is not legitimate self-defence, yet it is clearly part of the racist thinking of some Israelis and their apologists elsewhere.
It is actually normal that the logic of genocide presents itself as self-defence. Consider this quote by Amon Soffer, the pre-eminent alarmist in Israel over the “demographic” threat of Palestinians.
When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today … The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day … the only thing that concerns me is how to ensure the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.
This is the reasoning of someone who has no concern for military power, who will never accept Israel’s overwhelming military might and nuclear deterrent as a sufficient lever to ensure that Israel can be secure in a time of peace. These words are shockingly Himmleresque in labelling a people animals; in stating that mass killing is neither choice nor desire, but necessity; and in the sickening concern that mass killing might cause psychological harm to Israeli personnel. Adolf Eichmann and others at the Wannsee Conference shared Himmler’s fear of the effect of killing on the murderers and it was a major consideration in their adoption of the “Final Solution” which industrialised the mass-murder of Jews.
Soffer later explained: “I didn’t recommend that we kill Palestinians. I said we’ll have to kill them. I was right about mounting demographic pressures. I am also entitled to defend myself and my country.” It is difficult to imagine any Israeli getting closer to Nazi rhetoric than this, but it says something that his ideas were not immediately denounced by everyone in Israel for what they are. This is the essence of genocide. Though referencing the circumstances in Gaza, he is openly saying that Palestinians must be killed because they are Palestinians.
In contrast to genocidal notions, the theory behind using military power in self-defence draws on the idea that warfare is a contestation of belligerents using violence in a manner, as Clausewitz suggested, of wrestlers: “Each strives by physical force to compel the other to submit to his will….” This begins from the presupposition that each belligerent has diametrically opposed aims, which might have sufficed in the 19th Century, but does not suit our more complex polities today.
In reality, war is not a chess game and killing babies is not in any way the same as taking a pawn from the board, yet the use of aerial and ground artillery on populated areas implies that this brutal madness makes sense. We are tricked by the notion that the “self-defence” of nations is truly analogous to the self-defence of an individual using a weapon to counter an assailant. That analogy breaks down in an era of high-tech weaponry and in circumstances of asymmetry where the strong are killing the weak. Leaders and pundits often twist the notion of asymmetry itself to suggest that the strong are more vulnerable to the weak and are thus the real victims, but this is just one of those lies that are repeated so constantly that it becomes a commonplace.
Despite the clear disproportionate asymmetry of violence and the ever-growing numbers of people killed by Israel the media discourse enforces a framework that decontextualises Israeli violence, presenting it as a reaction to the violence of Hamas. Pro-Palestinian and pro-peace interviewees on Western media cannot speak without first making pronouncements affirming that they condemn Hamas’ “terrorist” violence and affirming Israel’s “right to defend itself”. These statements function as “thought-terminating clichés”, though in such instances they might be more aptly called “thought-terminating pieties”. Pieties go beyond mere clichés to invoke moralistic religious, patriotic, or other emotive ideological beliefs that create both a dominant sentiment as well as a constrictive framework of discourse. They close off certain avenues of speech, so that those who speak for Palestinians must begin by stating that Israel has a legal and moral right to kill Palestinians, and then take the stance of a supplicant begging for moderation, clemency, or mercy.
Of late Palestinians and others have pushed back against the pressure to commence their testimony and commentary with a condemnation of Hamas. They are trying to evade a narrative in which events commence with a condemnable act by Hamas and thus Israel’s massive surge of killing and destruction is framed as a reaction to Palestinian violence. This framework decontextualises events from the occupation and oppression including the ongoing acts of killing and destruction which Israeli personnel enact every single day in Palestine.
The “self-defence” argument is even more insidious than the attempt to frame all Israeli military violence as being in reaction to “terrorism”. It relies on a persistent but unrecognised one-sidedness. One cannot deny the right for Israelis to defend their lives, but nor can one deny the right of Palestinians to defend their lives. If Israel can kill Palestinian civilians in “self-defence” and present its own reasons to explain why such killings are necessary, then logic dictates that Hamas can do the exactly the same. Thus it may seem that if applied even-handedly “self-defence” becomes totally meaningless.
It may surprise people to know that in legal terms the problem of self-defence is not tricky nor intractable. Israel very clearly does not have the right to use military violence and claim self-defence on several grounds. Firstly, an occupied people has the right to resistance, including armed resistance, “in or outside their own territory”. Obviously it would be illogical to accord a legal right to armed resistance and then accord a legal right to collective self-defence against that legal resistance.
Thankfully the United Nations Charter has a way out of the paradoxes of allowing two belligerents the right to self-defence against each other’s self-defence and that of allowing self-defence against legal acts of resistance. Chapter VII of Article 51 states “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” Clearly “peace and security” has not been established but the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has passed many resolutions on Palestine. Israel is currently violating a very large number of these resolutions ranging at least as far back as UNSCR 242 in 1967 through to UNSCR 2334 in 2016. These violations are occurring despite the fact that the US constantly vetoes UNSC resolutions that it deems detrimental to Israel. Logically cannot claim a legal right to self-defence if it violates the UNSC resolutions designed to bring “peace and security” thus its real path to legitimate self-defence lies first and foremost in complying with all relevant resolutions. In simple terms Israel must end its occupation as the very first of any acts of self-defence. Thus it does have the right to self defence but it must cease its own belligerency first.
I want to complicate this further here, but in a way that will lead to greater elegance and certainty, by explaining the onus on the aggressor. In 1946 the International Military Tribunal described waging a war of aggression as “the supreme international crime” that “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Placing the onus on the aggressor (which is the government of the state not its people) in this way does not exonerate those who commit crimes in self-defence, but it means that the aggressor is also guilty. It is only thus that we can preserve the principle that all people have the right to life. Without the aggressor being morally and legally culpable it would mean not only that the military personnel of the aggressor belligerent have no right to life, but also that civilians of that state have no right to life if they should become legitimate collateral damage in legal military operations by the defending belligerent. This emphasis on the culpability of the aggressor is very satisfying because it closes these loopholes and also satisfies our moral instinct that a sovereign that wages aggressive war, knowingly sacrificing the lives of their own people, is guilty of the murder of those killed.
We need to pause here to reflect on our habitual callousness towards death in times of conflict. Death in wartime is so inevitable that we become inured to to its nature. Deaths caused by armed conflict tend to be terrifying, agonising, lonely, and brutally untimely. The grief of needless loss over those who usually have health and life to spare is not lessened because death becomes so statistical when the machinery of killing is unleashed. War is an abomination and every person who is currently working to prevent a ceasefire in Gaza is a criminal.
As things currently stand Israel has such a grip on the framing of the Western media coverage that it can get away with claiming its murders in Gaza are all part of a campaign to eradicate Hamas and that this is a legitimate act of self-defence. Of course, anyone who goes beyond the Western media (Al Jazeera being the easiest outlet to escape the censored narrative) will know that Israel is targeting civilians, hospitals, churches, ambulances, and so forth. For those who see only the Western media they must deal with the cognitive dissonance of seeing the death, destruction, and suffering and being told that it is arguably some form of self-defence. The trick with the Western media is not to state outright that Israel’s self-defence claims are true, but to avoid all facts or basic reasoning that gives lie to that claim.
Once those who support peace and humanity learn to counter Israel’s claims to the right to use violence in “self-defence” it will be another foundation of the propaganda narrative removed. Brave individuals are challenging the demand to begin all media interviews by condemning Hamas and refusing to accept timelines that always assert that cycles of violence begin with Palestinian actions. They need to add to that by rejecting Israel’s right to use arms in self-defence.
The way to counter the distortions of the Western media is to attack the borders of the narrative where they are thinnest and most strained. Some ideas are the sledgehammers that break through walls of cognitive dissonance, forcing people to unite what their eyes see and what their emotional and moral senses tell them with their intellectual framework – the story that they force facts and feelings into. When people see bombing, missiles and siege warfare against a powerless people the imagery does not naturally lend itself to a conclusion of violence waged for defensive purposes. To break the argument we need to attack the very validity of Israel’s claims.
An occupier cannot use arms in self-defence until they cease being the occupier.
The aggressor cannot be the defender.
Genocide is never justified. The violence of those who see others as a threat because of their membership in a “national, ethnical, racial or religious group” is the defining character of genocide. It is always framed as self-defence.
Kieran Kelly blogs at On Genocide. Read other articles by Kieran.
Gaza: Where is Hezbollah?
Following the spectacular “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation launched by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, the army of occupation has inflicted an unprecedented level of massacre and destruction on its defenseless civilian population, trapped in the world’s largest concentration camp. While Israel’s official stated aim is the annihilation of the Palestinian resistance, its unofficial objective seems to be the ethnic cleansing of the entire Gaza Strip, where everything is being done to make life impossible, paving the way for the definitive liquidation of the Palestinian cause.
Since the beginning of this crucial phase in the Arab-Israeli struggle, where the stakes seem existential on both sides, all eyes have been turned towards the northern border of occupied Palestine, with concern, hope and/or frustration: while NATO provides Israel with all its political and military support, will the Lebanese Hezbollah, which has always vowed to stand firmly by the Palestinians and fight the occupier relentlessly until the total Liberation of Palestine, intervene at the hour of truth?
Why are all eyes on Hezbollah?
France is ready for the international coalition against ISIS, to which we are committed for our operation in Iraq and Syria, to also fight against Hamas. […] We must also conduct this fight in such a way as to avoid setting the whole region ablaze. I warn Hezbollah, the Iranian regime, the Houthis in Yemen and all the factions in the region that threaten Israel not to take the ill-considered risk of opening up new fronts. To do so would be to open the door to a regional conflagration from which everyone would lose. This is a necessity for all the peoples of the region: let’s do everything we can to avoid adding tears to tears and blood to blood.
These were the words spoken by French President Emmanuel Macron in Tel Aviv on October 24, 2023, at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, whom he had come to assure of his unconditional support, going so far as to make the ignoble and grotesque proposal of involving French and NATO armed forces in the fight against Palestinian resistance. If he was the first (and only) to suggest this idea, he was not the first to threaten the Lebanese Hezbollah not to open a new front against Israel. The arrival of a large American war fleet in the Mediterranean has been widely interpreted as an attempt to intimidate the entire “Resistance Axis” in general (an informal alliance comprising, in addition to Palestinian Resistance factions, the Lebanese Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen) and Hezbollah in particular. When he announced the deployment of aircraft carriers in a speech on October 10, US President Joe Biden made it clear what he was talking about:
The United States has also enhanced our military force posture in the region to strengthen our deterrence. The Department of Defense has moved the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean and bolstered our fighter aircraft presence. And we stand ready to move in additional assets as needed.
Let me say again — to any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: Don’t. Don’t. Our hearts may be broken, but our resolve is clear.
Yesterday, I also spoke with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, and the UK to discuss the latest developments with our European allies and coordinate our united response.
This macabre ballet of Western leaders renewing their unconditional allegiance and support to the State of Israel clearly indicates, in addition to their abject and irreversible moral decay, the seriousness of the threat hanging over the occupier, and underlines Israel’s fragility far more than its strength: if Hamas, the weakest link in the Resistance Axis, can break all the defensive lines around Gaza in the space of a few hours, shattering forever any illusions about the superiority of the Israeli army, the devastating consequences of a regional war against Israel suddenly appeared in people’s minds more forcefully than ever. Israel would face total annihilation. Hezbollah alone, with more than 100,000 men and an even greater number of rockets and precision missiles, would be capable of inflicting casualties on Israel considerably greater than those of October 7, seizing and holding to vast territories in occupied northern Palestine and destroying the country’s vital infrastructure. And what if States like Syria and Iran intervened? The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, was in no way exaggerating when he declared that, by visiting Israel, Joe Biden, Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz, Rishi Sunak, Emmanuel Macron and others had come to the bedside of a dying friend:
The evil powers in the world can see that the Zionist regime is falling apart and on the verge of destruction due to the very strong, decisive blow of the Palestinian fighters. Thus, by making these trips, by expressing solidarity with the Zionist regime and providing it with criminal tools such as bombs and other weaponry, they are struggling to keep the wounded, crippled entity on its feet.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was even more explicit about the presence of US naval air forces off the coast of Israel, saying that they were specifically directed against Hezbollah:
I do not understand why the United States is sending aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean. It has sent one group and has announced the intention of sending another one. I do not see any sense in it. What are they planning to bomb there? Lebanon? What are they planning to do there? Or are they doing this for intimidation? But there are people there who are no longer afraid of anything. The problem should not be addressed in this way. Instead, we should look for compromise solutions. This is what we should do. These actions are certainly whipping up tension. If the conflict spreads beyond the Palestinian territories, things will get out of control.
Indeed, neither Hezbollah nor its allies are afraid, on the contrary: in fact, it’s fair to say that both in occupied Palestine and on the international scene, fear has changed sides. Moreover, if Joe Biden began by threatening Hezbollah and then the Axis of Resistance not to intervene in the conflict between Israel and Gaza, he quickly denied the allegation (spread by the Netanyahu government) that the United States would intervene alongside Israel if Hezbollah attacked (“It’s not true. I never said that”, Biden replied curtly), and his administration is now quietly advising Israel not to do anything that might bring Hezbollah into the picture.
Finally, let’s not forget that the Resistance Axis itself has issued the most explicit warnings to US forces: any open intervention alongside Israel will result in massive intervention by Palestine’s allies, with direct strikes not only against the Zionist entity (Yemen has already struck it four times with drones and missiles), but also against US forces in the Mediterranean and throughout the Middle East. And these are not empty threats: US bases in Iraq and Syria have been struck daily by Resistance factions since October 8 (so far, 23 attacks were acknowledged by the US command, and only two “retaliations” from the occupying US forces have taken place, which clearly demonstrates who is emboldened and who is intimidated). It’s clear that it’s not just Gaza that’s on the offensive, but all the forces of the Resistance Axis, whose enthusiasm and morale are at an all-time high since the spectacular success of the “Al-Aqsa Flood”, which was certainly no surprise for Hezbollah and its allies.
How does Hezbollah view the situation?
Far from adopting the defeatist and catastrophist view prevalent in the West due to the pervasiveness of racism, imperialism and Hollywood mythology, promoted by the most formidable media propaganda machine in history and extolling the invincibility of White armies — be they those of NATO or Israel, largely assimilated to the dominant civilization— the Resistance Axis does not consider Gaza to be on the brink of annihilation, but on the threshold of its greatest victory. Gaza is not in a defensive position, but one of initiative and conquest. Gaza is not fighting for survival, but leading the greatest liberation battle in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And the Palestinian Resistance has launched its most audacious attack to date at a time of its choosing, when its forces and those of its allies are at their peak, and those of the enemy are more fragile than ever.
The immediate objectives of the Resistance in Gaza are the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, an end to the desecration of the Al-Aqsa mosque and to ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and especially in East Jerusalem, and the lifting of the blockade. These three goals will most certainly be achieved, even if it takes several years. Experience showed this in 2006: whether it’s the capture of Gilad Shalit by Hamas in June 25 or the capture of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev by Hezbollah in July 12, Israel always starts out in a rage, launching campaigns of destruction in the hope of achieving military success or turning the civilian population against the Resistance, then realizes that none of these objectives can be achieved and that its army is heading for a debacle, and saves face by asking its US sponsor to stop vetoing ceasefire resolutions at the UN Security Council. The occupying power finally resolves to engage in negotiations and yields to the demands of the Resistance: Hezbollah freed all its prisoners in 2008, and Hamas freed over 1,000 in 2011. This is a recurring pattern, and there’s every chance of it happening again this time.
Admittedly, the destruction inflicted by Israel on Gaza, the scale of the massacres and the humanitarian stranglehold are unprecedented. But they are by no means a military achievement. The command, strength and capabilities of Hamas and the other Resistance factions in Gaza remain intact, as demonstrated by their ability to maintain rocket and missile fire against Israel on a daily basis, to prevent his groud invasion by daily attacks and to strike the Israeli territory more and more deeply. The 2006 war in Lebanon definitively proved that a simple air campaign, however violent, was incapable of liquidating, or even significantly weakening, a popular Resistance that has adopted guerrilla tactics. And the prospect of a ground offensive, whether in Lebanon or Gaza, has always remained wishful thinking on the Israeli side, as the fighters of Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad only dream of this opportunity to inflict considerable losses on Israeli forces. Decades of low-cost occupation against civilians in the West Bank have rendered the IDF absolutely incapable of carrying out a real offensive against armed forces worthy of the name, and this prospect literally terrorizes all echelons of command, who even fear mass mutinies and desertion on the part of their soldiers, the most cowardly in the world. The proof is that for 25 days, Israel has been promising an imminent ground offensive, but has only recently made timid incursions on the edge of Gaza, in largely deserted areas, still suffering heavy losses that only strict military censorship and the black-out imposed on Gaza allows hiding for the moment (for November 1st alone, Israel had to acknowledge 16 deaths, which is more than the sum of IDF casualties of all the wars fought after 2014): is such an army ready to confront an urban guerrilla, or will it be decimated? All the massacres of civilians only reflect the impotent rage of the occupying army and unmask its cowardice, barbarity and insatiable thirst for innocent blood. The atrocious images that are broadcast every day constitute an unfathomable disgrace and arouse the indignation of the entire world, which has clearly understood that the IDF is not an army of fighters, but of murderers of women and children. And the prestige of the Israeli army is not only shattered internationally, but in the eyes of the Israeli government, military command and population, which are more divided than ever.
Hezbollah, like the other forces of the Resistance Axis, is certainly not indifferent to the humanitarian aspect of the situation in Gaza, and will most certainly intervene in force if a red line is crossed. But the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon remains focused on the military aspect, in which, however difficult it may be to accept amid the daily scenes of carnage and plight of Gaza’s civilian population, the Palestinian Resistance holds the upper hand, just as the Lebanese Resistance never lost the upper hand throughout the 33 days of massacre and destruction in 2006. Destroying civilian infrastructure, massacring and starving populations and imposing a medieval siege on them, depriving more than two million people of water, electricity, fuel and medicine can only win a war against a weak political leadership, and a people incapable of enduring such suffering: but the Palestinians have long demonstrated that their resilience is, quite literally, unrivalled and foolproof. They would be slaughtered to the last man, woman, child and baby rather than give in to Israeli mass terrorism or become refugees for the third time, after the forced exoduses of 1948 (Nakba) and 1967 (Naksa), of which they are the direct descendants. But there is no doubt that if the Resistance in Gaza is seriously threatened in its integrity or even its existence, or if the entire Palestinian population is threatened with imminent forced displacement or humanitarian catastrophe, then Hezbollah and all the forces of the Resistance Axis will intervene with all their firepower, and this will be the end of the temporary usurping entity, even if the price to pay is enormous. If Hezbollah was ready for all-out war against Israel over Lebanon’s maritime borders, how could it hesitate when the Palestinian cause faced an existential threat? It is even possible that certain forces of the Resistance Axis have already taken the decision to intervene massively against Israel, but they will do so at the opportune moment, probably when the Israeli occupant is bogged down in Gaza and suffers another military disaster, which the Resistance might even have an interest in “encouraging” as much as possible. As Scott Ritter put it,
The Israeli army just isn’t that good. And they’re scared to death, because Hamas is waiting for them. This is one giant ambush. And the Israeli intelligence is blind. They don’t know where they are. They’re going to have to go in there and probe, and as they probe, they’re going to be blown up, ambushed, slaughtered, and they know this. The other thing that scares them is once they go into Gaza, they’re going to be committed in that battle with the bulk of their reserves, and if at that time, Hezbollah decides to open up a northern front, Israel has nothing left. And even if they had something left, they can’t beat Hezbollah. They can’t beat Hezbollah. They know it, they exercised. Last year, “Chariots of Fire” [maneuvers], this year “Firm Hand”, these are the names of two major exercises where Israel tested its ability to fight the Palestinians in the West Bank and Hezbollah up north, and they can’t do it, they don’t have the resources to do it. And if you throw in Iran, they’re definitely screwed. So America steps in and says we’re going to flex up our muscles in order to deter Hezbollah and Iran from striking. It’s not working. Two aircraft carriers battle groups, an amphibious raiding group of 2,000 Marines, it does not win a war. And we don’t have anything behind that. We have nothing. If Hezbollah attacks, Biden can bomb them but it’ll be up to Netanyahu to stop them. And if he can’t, Israel is screwed.
Leaving the enemy in doubt and uncertainty, exerting the necessary pressure to dissuade it from crossing certain limits, and reserving surprises for it, is an art in which Hezbollah and its allies excel, and they must wish for a major Israeli ground incursion into Gaza as ardently as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who have promised to make it the invaders’ graveyard. The speeches of Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, are by no means empty, bombastic language, but reveal the shared vision of the entire Resistance Axis with regard to the military situation in Gaza, and the unshakeable certainty of an upcoming triumphant victory, which will be multiplied tenfold in the event of a large-scale ground operation. Here are extracts from his speeches on October 30 and 31:
In the continuity of the heroic battle of the Al-Aqsa Flood that the Palestinian Resistance, led by the Al-Qassam Brigades and the Al-Quds Brigades, launched, we stand firm against the aggression, and continue to write chapters of honor and pride and achieve success after success on the road to the inevitable victory, God willing.
Before your very eyes, the Resistance stands proud, its fighters still have their fingers on the trigger and are facing up to the situation on the ground, and the blessed rocket barrages have not stopped, continuing to hit Tel Aviv, Ashdod, Asqelon, Beersheva and the whole area around Gaza, in retaliation for the continuing perpetuation of massacres and the deliberate targeting of our innocent civilians.
Our forces, alongside other Resistance factions, continue their heroic deeds on the battlefield, confronting the futile ground incursion maneuvers carried out by the enemy army under a deluge of fire, in a vain effort to give an illusion of achievement and restore confidence in the Gaza Brigade, which was the main target of the Al-Aqsa Flood.
The enemy is doing its utmost to paint a deceptive image of success, and to boast a mirage of progress and achievement on the ground, but we know full well what its real objectives are. We have maneuvered in the field time and again to deny the enemy opportunities to advance, in accordance with our understanding of the battle.
O army of successive defeats, O caravan of vile rats coming to sully the soil of our worthy and proud Gaza, inform Yoav Gallant [Israeli Defense Minister] and Herzi Halevi [Chief of Staff of the Israeli forces] of what happened to you West of Bayt Lahia, East of Khan Younis and Beit Hanoun, and today in the Zaitoun neighborhood. Tell them how you let yourselves be lured like fools into an ambush of death and into fields of horror. And once again, come forward, for I swear by God, we’re waiting for you with bated breath.
O our Palestinian people, O Arab and Islamic nations, O free men of the world, we continue our battle, the battle of the Al-Aqsa Flood. And at our side is our resilient people, ready for any sacrifice, who continue to chant, despite the bloodshed, his immutable attachment to his cause with the noblest marks of devotion and loyalty, as every Palestinian is ready to give everything on the path to freedom for our people.
With our stance and achievements, we reaffirm, with the support of our people, the value and dignity of our lives. Our people, in all their components and factions, pledge their loyalty to the call to Resistance and stand tall, rising from beneath the rubble, whether as martyrs, draped in the shroud of victory heralded by their sacrifice, or as survivors, shouting with all their might their support for the Resistance, in a scene that dismays the Zionist cowards, who have worked hard to turn the people against us but have failed to separate the Resistance from its popular base. […]
Recently, the Zionist enemy began ground maneuvers on several fronts. The first front is in the north-west of the Gaza Strip, while the second stretches from the eastern center of the Strip to its south-east. They are also present around the Beit Hanoun crossing and in the vicinity of Beit Hanoun.
The criminal enemy approached these fronts after more than 20 days of bombardment using all types of weapons, attempting to displace our population and causing extensive destruction, presumably to restore the image of their defeated army that we shattered on October 7. As soon as these Zionist ground forces reached our defense lines and contact zones, our forces began harassing them and continue to defend themselves against the enemy’s planned attacks on all frontlines.
Our fighters are and have been engaged in fierce confrontations and direct clashes. Despite the enemy’s advance, our fighters have succeeded in engaging enemy forces and destroying 22 Zionist vehicles so far, using the highly penetrating Al-Yassin 105 shells and our devastating explosive guerrilla bombs that have been deployed in this battle.
Our fighters attacked the Zionist forces using various types of explosives and missiles, and they carried out infiltration operations from behind enemy lines in gatherings and advance areas, managing to kill many soldiers of the occupation. We continue to bombard ground forces with mortar shells and short-range missile barrages, while continuing to strike deep into enemy territory with rockets of varying ranges. Our naval forces successfully carried out multiple attacks on several naval targets, using the Al-Asif torpedo which entered service during this battle.
Our defensive operations continue and are only just beginning. By God’s grace and strength, we still have much in store. As we promised the enemy, Gaza will be its graveyard and a nightmare for its soldiers. […]
We affirm that the strategic results of this battle will consist of transformation at all levels and in all directions for the benefit of the Resistance and the project of Liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine, with the grace of God.
This is on this assessment of the ground that Hezbollah plans its actions. And as Abu Obeida says in conclusion, let us recall that the ultimate goal of the Palestinian Resistance, Hezbollah and the Resistance Axis is not simply to lift the blockade or release the prisoners, to end the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and the desecration of Al-Aqsa, nor even to impose a resolution of the conflict with the establishment of two States, a solution dead and buried for a long time due to Israeli colonization, in no way. The strategic goal of the Resistance Axis is to completely wipe out the State of Israel from the map, to expel all settlers and to establish a single Palestinian state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. Additionally, following the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Resistance Axis forces announced that their goal was to drive out all U.S. forces from the Middle East. This long-term objective must be accomplished with as little loss of life as possible. It would be the inevitable result of a total regional war (which could have been triggered when Iran struck the US base of Al-Assad in Iraq, a first since Pearl Harbor), but it could cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians and Yemenis if it were carried out today, the US empire being in clear decline but not yet in its terminal phase of collapse (even if Covid, the debacle in Afghanistan then in Ukraine and the economic and energy crisis allow us to expect this moment more acutely than ever). Strategic patience requires waiting for the opportune moment, when a war may not even be necessary (or will at least be much less deadly and would not involve NATO forces), for example if the collapse of the United States follows the model of the Soviet Union. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah himself raised the hypothesis during an interview dating from 2019:
The power of Israel depends essentially on that of the United States. Therefore, if something happens to the United States – like what happened to the USSR, for example a collapse of its economy, internal problems and discord, natural disasters or any other incident that could cause the United States to United in focusing on their internal problems and reducing their presence and influence in the region – I assure you that the Israelis will pack up on their own and evacuate as soon as possible. Therefore, the destruction of Israel does not necessarily require war.
Nasrallah stressed it again after the assassination of Qassem Soleimani in January 2020:
Within the Axis of Resistance, our will and our objective must be the following: the answer to the murder of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi is to expel American forces from our entire region! If we achieve this goal, and we will achieve it God willing, the Liberation of Al-Quds, of the Palestinian people, the full return of all Palestine and all the holy places of Palestine to the Arab-Muslim Nation will be very close, a stone’s throw away. When the United States leaves our region, these Zionists will pack up and leave (hastily). It may not even require a battle against Israel.
As difficult as it may be to say and accept, it would not make sense for Hezbollah to start a war that would sacrifice Lebanese civilians by the thousands and destroy the country’s infrastructure in order to save 5,000 or even 10,000 Palestinians. Especially if Hamas can achieve this victory alone, albeit at the cost of enormous sacrifices, as neither Hezbollah nor its allies want to compete with it to take the laurels. If the Resistance in Gaza makes it out by itself, the humiliation will only be greater for the Zionist entity, and will accelerate its inevitable demise: it would be a much greater shock for Israel to be defeated by Gaza alone than by an international coalition of forces, and it would shatter any sense of security for the settlers around Gaza, who might never come back. But if, at any point, the Palestinian cause itself is at stake, if Gaza or the Resistance are on the verge of annihilation, if it is a question of saving Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the Al-Aqsa mosque, Hezbollah and the Resistance Axis will enter the war in full force and will not shy away from any sacrifice, absolutely none, even if it had biblical proportions. Indeed, the ideal would be a Liberation of Al-Quds on the model of the Prophet’s entry into Mecca, that happened without any major combat (because then the superiority of the Muslim armies was so overwhelming that no one dared to oppose it), but if they have no other choice to save Palestine, Hezbollah and the entire Resistance Axis will not back down from Armageddon itself.
Is Hezbollah standing idle?
Last but not least, it should be remembered that since October 7, Hezbollah has not been sitting idle: it has continued to confront Israel on south Lebanon, and to inflict serious losses on its forces. Hezbollah’s policy is simple: initially, it lets the different factions of the Palestinian Resistance in Lebanon hit Israel with rocket attacks, or attempted incursions, which it unofficially covers and facilitates but without officially participating; secondly, when the occupier retaliates, Hezbollah declares that it cannot tolerate this aggression against Lebanon, and that it will respond (by the way, this is in no way impudent: according to international law, an occupied people has the right to use force to liberate their lands; an occupier only has the right to pack up, and cannot ever invoke self-defense): thus Hezbollah can support the Palestinian Resistance without departing from the defined rules of engagement against Israel, and carry out daily attacks against Israeli bases, troops and settlements along the whole border (all the videos of Hezbollah operations are displayed on this Telegram channel) without the situation escalating into a total war.
The Lebanese Resistance has just published this graph which indicates the losses inflicted on the occupier between October 8 and 30 “as part of operations on the road to the liberation of Al-Quds”: 120 Israeli soldiers were killed or injured, 65,000 settlers were evacuated from 28 settlements, 13 armed vehicles were destroyed (2 armored personnel carriers, 2 Humvees and 9 tanks) and 105 military sites were targeted. In addition, 69 communications systems, 17 jamming systems and 27 intelligence systems, 140 cameras, 33 radars and 1 drone were destroyed, so that Israel is almost completely blinded to what is happening on the Lebanese border, which would facilitate a major ground offensive from Lebanon. For its part, Hezbollah announced 49 martyrs so far: these are indeed low-intensity clashes, but on both sides, the losses in soldiers already represent almost a third of those of the entire July 2006 war, which is far from insignificant. Especially since this daily pressure on the occupier does not only represent moral support, but indeed military support. As Sheikh Naïm Qassem, Deputy Secretary General of Hezbollah, declared, Israel has amassed 5 brigades around Gaza, and 3 brigades on the Lebanese border: without the threat that Hezbollah poses to Israel, 8 brigades would be amassed around Gaza. It is therefore above all a matter of dividing the enemy’s forces, and of leaving its command in uncertainty, in order to paralyze its decision and its willingness to massively commit its forces against the Palestinian Resistance. In this regard, the success is undeniable: to be convinced of this, one only needs to listen to the confused and contradictory declarations of Netanyahu, his ministers and the Israeli general staff on the launch of the ground operation, its timing, its scale, its objectives, etc.
Lebanon: Hassan Nasrallah discusses developments with Ziyad Al-Nakhalah (Islamic Jihad) and Salah Al-Arouri (Hamas)
Additionally, Hezbollah is directly involved in the daily operations of the Resistance in Gaza, working closely with Hamas and Islamic Jihad cadres based in Lebanon in a common command room. Following Nasrallah’s high-profile meeting with Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders on October 25, Hamas political leader Salah al-Arouri said:
We are witnessing a heroic epic of Resistance in Lebanon against the occupier along the southern borders, where daily clashes break out and where martyrs fall daily among Hezbollah, the Al-Quds Brigades and the Al-Qassam Brigades. Hezbollah operates at all military and political levels, and our battle is also their battle. We share one goal and one destiny. Our struggle is united, our destiny is shared towards Al-Quds. We are in constant coordination in this battle.
Not all of our meetings with Hezbollah are public. We met Sayed Hassan Nasrallah on the first day of the battle. We are in constant meetings and maintain deep and precise communication with all the Resistance forces and our Hezbollah brothers, with Sayed Nasrallah on the front line.
If the enemy invades by land, it will mark a new and glorious chapter for our people and an unprecedented defeat for the occupation in the history of the Israeli-Arab struggle. Punishment for the crimes of the occupation is inevitable. We assure our people that the Resistance is doing well despite the crimes of the enemy and will ease your hearts regarding the extent of your suffering in the event of a brutal ground attack.
To the occupation, I declare this: be ready, because the battle has not yet begun.
It is more than likely that Hezbollah was not surprised by the October 7 operation nor by its spectacular success, Nasrallah having constantly warned Israel not to underestimate the Palestinian Resistance, and to fear a massive reaction if they did not stop their ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and their provocations at the Al-Aqsa mosque: “Don’t miscalculate”, he kept warning the Israeli occupier and his new fascist government. We can even say that the Lebanese Resistance, which, thanks to its experience of liberating territories occupied by ISIS and Al-Nusra in Syria, has been planning an operation to invade Israel and liberate the Galilee for years, has transmitted its expertise to the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, which took the Israeli army completely by surprise by launching an operation it expected on its northern border. Hezbollah is therefore directly linked to all aspects of the terrain and the situation, and assists the Resistance factions in all possible ways, similar to what the United States is doing for Israel.
What now?
Hezbollah’s decisions are influenced neither by the threats of enemies, nor by the reproaches (or even bitter insults) of friends who allow themselves to be carried away by emotion and see in Hezbollah’s attitude cowardice or a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. Hezbollah has never cared about “saving face” and is only driven by its long-term strategic vision, which is entirely focused on the total liberation of Palestine and the ways to achieve this strategic objective while minimizing sacrifices, if possible. Those who consider the eradication of Israel an unrealizable illusion are the same people who, in 1982, would have considered the desire of the nascent Hezbollah to expel by force the Israeli army which occupied half of Lebanon, or who, before October 7, would have found it inconceivable that the Resistance in Gaza could break the siege and inflict such losses and humiliation on the enemy. The red lines which, if crossed, would bring in Hezbollah and the Resistance Axis with all its firepower are probably clearly drawn, but it would not be wise to divulge them: it would be telling Israel that he can go this far without risking an all-out war. Leaving the enemy in confusion and exerting controlled pressure on the Lebanese border is the best strategy for this phase of the battle: Hezbollah demonstrates that he is present, that he is not afraid of confrontation or of escalation, and that he is ready for open war.
Whatever happens, October 7 will go down in history as a resounding victory for the Palestinian Resistance, and an earthquake for Israel. No massacre, no destruction, no genocide can ever erase it. As Sheikh Naïm Qassem pointed out, Israel has little choice today but between being content with the crushing defeat it has already suffered, or persisting in blind revenge and suffering discredit and defeat on a much bigger scale. Each of these two scenarios is satisfactory for the Palestinian Resistance and its allies, who will not abandon it, whatever the price to pay. And already, the confidence of Israeli society in its army and in itself, which has only become more fragile over the last two decades, is irremediably broken, especially for tens of thousands of Israelis living around Gaza, and the process of remigration of Zionist settlers to Europe and America will only accelerate. Again, to quote Scott Ritter,
Israel is extraordinarily weak, extraordinarily exposed, extraordinarily scared, and America doesn’t have a solution. What might happen to Israel is even worse than Ukraine, because Ukrainians right now don’t have a place to run to. Millions of Israelis have double citizenship and they’ll just leave Israel. That’s the death of Israel. This happened in 1991 when the Iraki Scuds came in. What the Israelis kept saying is that it wasn’t so much the physical damage that the Scuds were doing, but the emotional and psychological damage it was doing to the Israelis. If the American and European Jews don’t want to go and stay there, it’s over for the Israeli experiment. If Hezbollah can come and threaten the north of Israel, if Hamas can threaten the center, it’s over. Millions of Israelis will flee and never come back and that’s it for Israel.
Hassan Nasrallah’s speech announced for November 3, in tribute to the martyrs of the Lebanese Islamic Resistance who fell in recent days, will finally break the silence of the Hezbollah Secretary General, an expert in psychological warfare, whose silence as well as his speeches are feared and deciphered by Israel. He will not necessarily make thunderous announcements, though many people expect him to do so, but he will clarify the very tense situation on the Lebanese border, which is getting worse every day, and could degenerate into open conflict at any time. Of all the speeches Nasrallah has given, this is probably the one that will be the most eagerly awaited and followed by both friends and enemies of the Party of God and Palestine.
Sayed Hasan writes on Middle Eastern geo-political events. Read other articles by Sayed, or visit Sayed's website.
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