Hidden History -- In The Making

A UKRAINE NO-FLY ZONE MUST BE REJECTED BY NATO

The Reckless Idea Has Resurfaced The Past Few Weeks. Even A Majority Of Hardline Figures In The West Considered The Move Too Dangerous, Since It Would Lead To Direct Clashes Between NATO And Russian Aircraft.

In the past few weeks, Russian drones and jet fighters have repeatedly penetrated the airspace of Poland, Estonia, and other NATO members. Western officials have reacted harshly to those episodes, shooting down intruding drones and, in the case of President Donald Trump, issuing threats to attack even manned Russian aircraft if such incidents continue.

NATO leaders and their supporters in the news media are responding to the rising tensions by reviving an idea from the earliest days of the Kremlin’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine: imposing a no-fly zone over that country. It is an especially provocative and dangerous scheme that carries a serious risk of triggering World War III.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately called for NATO to establish a no-fly zone when Russia invaded in 2022. However, President Joe Biden spurned the proposal, and NATO’s foreign ministers explicitly declined to take that step at a March 4^th session. Even a majority of hardline figures in the West considered the move too dangerous, since it would lead to direct clashes between NATO and Russian aircraft. Support for the initiative was confined only to the most hawkish, reckless individuals and groups, such as then-Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), Liz Cheney’s male alter ego. Even scholars at the Atlantic Council came out against it.

Zelensky has never relented in his quest for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone, however. In June 2024, the president and his advisors pushed a more limited option of creating such a zone over just western Ukraine, relying on air defense systems in neighboring NATO countries to enforce it. Their logic was that using such weaponry to shoot Moscow’s planes out of the sky would be less dangerous than sending up NATO aircraft to intercept their Russian counterparts in Ukrainian airspace. After the surge in drone incursion incidents this September, Zelensky joined his Polish counterpart in again calling for NATO to install a no-fly zone over his country.

Kiev’s enthusiastic lobbyists in the West kept up the pressure as well. Writing in July 2023, Andreas Umland stated that imposing a no-fly zone was as imperative as ever. With the arrogant certitude so typical of Umland and his ideological compatriots, he casually dismissed warnings that offering such protection to Ukraine was unduly perilous. “Many observers see Western-backed no-fly zones over the Ukrainian hinterland as a path to World War III. But it is unlikely that such an escalation would occur, so long as Western troops are not deployed on the front lines.” Other pro-Ukraine lobbyists, such as former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis, are still advocating the scheme of confronting Russian planes.

Imposing a Ukraine no-fly zone was an irresponsible idea when ultra-hawks first proposed it in 2022, and it is now even more so. NATO’s initial response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was to adopt new economic sanctions against Moscow and to provide economic and limited military aid to Kiev. That involvement has expanded into a NATO proxy war against Russia. NATO members are not only supplying vast quantities of sophisticated offensive weaponry to Ukraine so that Kiev can attack targets deep inside Russia, but have also provided direct logistical assistance, including targeting data, to Ukrainian forces. The Wall Street Journal now reports that the United States is willing to give Kiev crucial intelligence assistance for such long-range missile strikes.

Vladimir Putin’s government has remained surprisingly patient and restrained with respect to such growing provocations. But Moscow’s patience is not infinite. Putin and other high-level Russian officials have stated bluntly that NATO is waging war against their country. The Kremlin is now warning that it regards American military personnel who assist Kiev in operating Ukraine’s Patriot air defense systems as legitimate targets. Indeed, one such incident may already have taken place. The latest declaration is just one more indication about how alarming tensions between NATO and Russia are rising. For its part, Moscow appears to be probing the alliance’s air defense systems with the proliferation of drone and fighter plane incursions into the air space of NATO member states.

Attempting to impose a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine in such a dangerous, increasingly unstable political and military environment is virtually begging for trouble. NATO leaders have not yet officially endorsed the idea, but resistance to the scheme among prominent members of the Western foreign policy establishment is noticeably less vocal and extensive than it was in 2022 or 2023.

Even flirting with the scheme is ill-advised. Russian leaders already were furious about how the United States and its allies contemptuously dismissed Moscow’s repeated warnings that making Ukraine a NATO member or de facto military asset would cross a bright red line and pose an existential threat to Russia’s security. Perceptive Western analyses warned about NATO’s tone deaf policy, but to no avail. Scott Horton’s splendid book, Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, provides the most detailed, sobering account of NATO’s policy malfeasance and the tragedy it caused.

Unfortunately, the NATO powers seem determined to repeat the blunder of ignoring Moscow’s new warnings and red lines with even worse potential consequences. The blustering, confrontational reaction of Washington and its allies to Russia’s growing intrusions into the airspace of NATO members conveys a contemptuous belief that the Kremlin is just bluffing—that Putin would never actually attack a member of the alliance and risk a devastating military response from a united NATO. Such confidence may be erroneous, just as the consensus that Moscow would not launch a full-scale war against Ukraine proved to be.

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, NATO’s level of involvement in the conflict has escalated inexorably and dramatically. Over time, the NATO powers have become de facto belligerent parties in the war. Russian leaders now openly assert that NATO is waging a war against the Russian Federation. Trying to establish and enforce a no-fly zone could be the capstone to the Western process of escalation. Imposing and trying to enforce such a zone also might well be the action that sparks a regional or even global conflagration.

YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD TO FEAR MUSLIMS WHILE THE AMERICAN EMPIRE TERRORIZES THE WORLD

The Empire You Live Under Is Everything You Are Trained To Fear. Your Own Rulers Are The Murderers. Your Own Rulers Are The Terrorists. Your Own Rulers Are The Tyrants.

Your own rulers are the problem.

An article was put out last month about a leaked polling report commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs which actually found that promoting Islamophobia is the most effective way of combatting the way worldwide public opinion has been turning against Israel.

“Israel’s best tactic to combat this, according to the study, is to foment fear of ‘Radical Islam’ and ‘Jihadism,’ which remain high,” Ryan Grim wrote: “By highlighting Israeli support for women’s rights and gay rights while elevating concerns that Hamas wants to ‘destroy all Jews and spread Jihadism,’ Israeli support rebounded by an average of over 20 points in each country.”

So this is an actual, planned tactic. The shrieking vitriol we’ve been seeing about Islam and Muslims lately is being deliberately and systematically fomented as a calculated strategy.

One of the moronic things about this latest wave of Islamophobic hysteria is that the American regime, Israel and their allies are vastly more murderous and tyrannical than the entire Muslim world combined.

The Trump administration is currently sending the world’s largest aircraft carrier and a bunch of warships to the waters off Latin America, where they’ve been waging a bogus new war on terror with increasingly frequent attacks on boats carrying alleged “narco-terrorists”. They’re not even disguising the fact that this is actually about preparing for regime change interventionism in Venezuela, a government that Washington has long sought to topple because of its massive oil reserves and noncompliance with the capitalist world order.

The American power alliance is constantly doing things like this. Waging wars, bombing countries, imposing starvation sanctions, staging coups, backing proxy conflicts, meddling in foreign elections — all with the goal of total planetary domination. It’s accepted as the baseline norm and the western press often barely even reports on its abuses (did you know Trump has bombed Somalia more than 80 times this year?), but that doesn’t make it any less murderous and tyrannical.

And we’re being told day in and day out that we all need to be afraid of Muslims, who even with a worldwide population of two billion still manage to be far, far less violent and destructive than the American-centralized power alliance.

In fact, the most abusive Muslim states are America’s partners in crime like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whose genocidal butchery in Yemen was backed by the American regime and its allies from 2015–2022. The UAE is funding genocidal atrocities in Sudan right this very moment. The American-centralized empire is the most destructive power structure on earth, and the most destructive Muslim states are backed by that same western power structure.

The empire you live under is everything you have trained to fear. Your own rulers are the murderers. Your own rulers are the terrorists. Your own rulers are the tyrants. Your own rulers are the problem.

Your rulers want you shaking your fists at Muslims, immigrants, disobedient governments, and members of the other mainstream political party so that you don’t start shaking your fists at them.

AMERICA’S ATTACKS ON SMALL BOATS ARE ILLEGAL

Since The First Of September, The American Navy Has Been Blowing Up Small Vessels Off The Coast Of Venezuela. The Perpetrators Should Be Subjected To Prosecution Under International War Crimes Laws.

Since the first of September, the American Navy has been blowing up small vessels off the coast of Venezuela. Over 10 nine boats with approximately 42 dead have reportedly been attacked. The American regime declares that these boats are an imminent threat to the country because they are operated by narco-terrorists. It appears no evidence was necessary to suport these attacks by the regime.

The Trump administration has completely eschewed the legal requirements for due process or normal interdiction procedures. Sadly, due to the Global War on Terror, we Americans have tragically grown accustomed to their government assassinating people because they are merely suspected terrorists. Leaving aside moral issues, it is worth recalling that these actions are illegal under both domestic and international law.

First and foremost, these actions are in contradiction to the United States Constitution. Article I, section 8 clearly states that Congress shall have the power to “declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water.” Article II, section 2 states: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.” The president does command the forces, but only Congress can declare war—and Congress has not declared war against alleged “drug boats” in Latin America. These small boats 1,300 miles from the Florida Keys pose no emergency threat, and blowing them up is clearly an act of war.

Congress has appropriated many trillions of dollars for a plethora of wars since World War II. However, since 1942, they haven’t had the courage to take responsibility and actually declare war as the Constitution requires. Over the years, they usually haven’t even had the fortitude to refuse to finance wars with which they disagree. As a result of congressional unwillingness to exercise their mandated duties, the forever and failed wars have continued unabated. Congress does not want to be caught voting for wars which the public doesn’t want. Especially if the war becomes a failure, as is normally the case, they enjoy being free to say whatever the public wants to hear without the record of a pesky vote to contradict their dishonest rhetoric. To aid this ruse, the leadership tends to wrap the military budgets into big continuing resolutions or omnibus bills so there is no vote showing undeniable support for particular wars. The result: a win-win for duplicitous politicians and the military industry, but a big lose-lose for the American people and the poor American and foreign souls murdered and maimed.

The latest attacks and killings are also forbidden by article 2, section 4 of the UN Charter: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

Article 51 allows unilateral use of force only in self-defense against an “armed attack.” America is not threatened by small outboard motor boats more than 1,000 miles from it’s shores, and their mere existence in international waters, even if they are carrying drugs, certainly doesn’t constitute an “armed attack.” Off the coast of Venezuela there is a significant American flotilla, which is fully capable of intercepting these small boats without having to obliterate them.

International Maritime Law (UNCLOS) article 88 states, “The high seas shall be reserved for peaceful purposes.” While drug interdiction may be permitted, the standard procedure is visit, search, and seize, not summary destruction.

Or consider the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, adopted in 1998 and signed by the American regime in 2000. This statute sets out the court’s jurisdiction over war crimes among other issues. In May 2002 Undersecretary of State John Bolton formally notified the UN secretary general that the United States “does not intend to become a party to the treaty.” (Anyone surprised it was John Bolton who made this submission?) The George W. Bush administration was prepping for the invasion of Iraq—and the other countries on the neocon hit list—so were looking to limit the liability for those illegal wars. Remember, Iran is the last on the list that hasn’t been wrecked to date.

In 1950 the United States voted to approve the United Nations Nuremberg Principles, several of which are relevant to the Trump administration’s military campaign in Latin America:

Principle III: “The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.”

Principle IV: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

Principle VI: “The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i). (b) War crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder…” “…or devastation not justified by military necessity. (c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population…”

Back to domestic law: The 1981 Executive Order 12333 section 2.11 signed by President Ronald Reagan states, “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” This order has never been revoked.

When you consider the above, it is no surprise the admiral in charge of SOUTHCOM—the regional command responsible for Central and South America, their territorial waters, and the Caribbean—recently opted for early retirement.

Of course, the American regime has ignored these laws with impunity for decades because of its stature and power in the world. That is changing rapidly, and America’s leaders should begin to contemplate that they may be held accountable by international courts. Because of America’s many illegal and unjust wars, the number of countries who have lost respect for and dislike America is increasing rapidly. There may come a time when those countries or a large group of them will hold our leaders responsible and pursue prosecution.

ISLAMOPHOBIA IS PUSHED BY THE ZIONISTS BECAUSE IT’S EASIER THAN GETTING GOOD PEOPLE TO LIKE ISRAEL

Israel Makes Everything Gross. It Makes The World More Violent, More Sociopathic, And More Hateful. The State Is Sustained By Nonstop Violence And Hatred.

Have you ever noticed how whenever you see someone promoting hatred toward Muslims, nine times out of ten it will be someone who supports Israel? There’s a reason for that.

Zionists promote Islamophobia because convincing westerners to hate Muslims is easier than convincing them to love Israel.

Support for Israel is a hard sell. On paper it’s just a crappy, evil country full of shitty, evil people, and has no redeeming qualities as a state. Nobody can explain how it’s an important ally in a way that makes sense; all the problems they claim it helps solve are problems Israel itself creates with the help of western backing. Unless you’re a devout Jewish Zionist or Christian Zionist there’s nothing about the modern state of Israel you’d naturally be inclined to support.

Appealing to western racism, however, is much easier. We’ve got entire mainstream political factions whose whole platform is just grimacing in disgust at anyone who looks and acts a bit different. White supremacism runs deep, and westerners have been fighting and killing Muslims for many centuries, so there’s plenty of cultural memory to draw on for this specific form of hatred.

So they don’t worry so much about explaining the positives about the state of Israel, focusing instead on fearmongering about the religion whose adherents tend to wind up on the receiving end of Israeli military violence. They can’t convince us that Israel is good in and of itself, but they can convince many of us that it’s good to drop military explosives on Muslims.

Most of the Islamophobia you see in the west comes from Israel supporters and people who’ve been propagandized by Israel supporters. A small minority comes from extreme fringe rightists who hate both Muslims and Jews, but the majority is the product of western support for Israel and the west’s warmongering in the middle east which Israel consistently plays a role in.

That’s why you’ll see high-profile Israeli social media accounts fearmongering about the growing Muslim populations in Europe, for example. You wouldn’t think it would be any of Israel’s concern if there are a lot of Muslims in Belgium or whatever, but it is in Israel’s political interests to keep westerners fearful and disdainful toward members of the Islamic faith.

We’re seeing more and more of this as Israel increasingly alienates western centrists and progressives, relying more and more heavily on support from the western right. As the narrative that a poor persecuted religious minority needs to have its own homeland loses traction with its intended audience, we’re seeing it increasingly replaced with the narrative that them there Muslims need killin’, yeehaw.

Israel makes everything gross. It makes the world more violent, more sociopathic, and more hateful. The entire state is sustained by nonstop violence and hatred. It’s a malignant tumor on the flesh of our species.

MORE THAN 150 CONTRIBUTORS TO THE NEW YORK TIMES ARE GOING TO BOYCOTT THE PAPER OVER IT’S GAZA COVERAGE

They Demand That The Paper Examine Its Bias, Update Its Style Guide On Israel-Palestine, And Call For An American Arms Embargo To Israel.

More than 150 New York Times contributors have signed a pledge not to write for the American newspaper’s opinion section, citing its “biased coverage” of the Israel-Palestine conflict and war on Gaza.

“Until The New York Times takes accountability for its biased coverage and commits to truthfully and ethically reporting on the US-Israeli war on Gaza, any putative ‘challenge’ to the newsroom or the editorial board in the form of a first-person essay is, in effect, permission to continue this malpractice,” the signatories to the letter wrote.

“Only by withholding our labor can we mount an effective challenge to the hegemonic authority that the Times has long used to launder the US and Israel’s lies,” the writers added.

The letter was signed by dozens of high-profile activists, artists, and American politicians including Rima Hassan; Chelsea Manning; Rashida Tlaib; Sally Rooney; Elia Suleiman; Greta Thunberg; Viet Than Nguyen; and Dave Zirin.

“We owe it to the journalists and writers of Palestine to refuse complicity with the Times, and to demand that the paper account for its failures, such that it can never again manufacture consent for mass slaughter, torture, and displacement,” the authors wrote.

Some other prominent names joining the boycott include Chris Hedges; Marc Lamont Hill; Noura Erakat; Vijay Prashad; Mariame Kaba; Robin DG Kelley; Mohammed el-Kurd; Susan Stryker; Jia Tolentino; Eve L Ewing; Dean Spade; Nyle Fort; Susan Abulhawa; and Rashid Khalidi.

THREE DEMANDS

The signatories issued three demands to The New York Times.

First, it called on the newspaper to conduct “a review of anti-Palestinian bias and produce new editorial standards for Palestine coverage”.

The signatories called for new sourcing and citation practices, along with a new style guide for how the paper uses vocabulary to describe the Israel-Palestine conflict. The letter also called for a ban on any journalist who has served in the Israeli military.

The writers also called on The New York Times to retract a December 2023 article titled “Screams Without Words,” which alleged that Palestinians who took part in the Hamas-led 7^th October 2023 attack committed sexual assault against Israeli women.

That article relied largely on the testimony of an unnamed Israeli special forces paramedic. A spokesperson for the kibbutz where the article claimed the assaults took place later denied the allegations made by The New York Times.

Anat Schwartz, one of the report’s authors, was later investigated by the paper after it emerged that she had liked a social media post calling for Gaza to be turned into a “slaughterhouse”.

Prior to the article, family members of the girls killed during the attack, who were the alleged victims of the sexual assault, gave several interviews that appeared to contradict the claims made in the story. However, none of these interviews were used in the New York Times piece.

The letter’s signatories also demand that The New York Times’ editorial board call for an American arms embargo on Israel.

The signatories said their demands were neither “impossible nor unreasonable”. The authors noted that the paper updated its style guide during the late 1980s AIDS crisis and also apologised for erroneous reporting following the 2003 American invasion of Iraq.

“There is no US newspaper more influential than The New York Times. Editors and producers in newsrooms across the West take cues from its coverage, it is widely considered the ‘paper of record’ in the United States,” the letter said.

“Since Israel began its genocidal war on Gaza, The New York Times has obfuscated, justified, and outright denied the occupier’s war crimes, thus continuing the paper’s decades-long practice of acting as a bullhorn for the Israeli government and military,” the signatories added.

THE AMERICAN REGIME’S LAWLESS AND ARROGANT ATTEMPT AT REGIME CHANGE IN VENEZUELA

The Trump Regime Is Ramping Up Military Aggression Against Venezuela. His Attacks On Several Boats In The Caribbean Have Killed At Least 27 People As Of October 17th.

Now, President Donald Trump has signed a presidential finding, which approves CIA covert action in Venezuela.

The military and national security veterans at the Eisenhower Media Network disagree strongly with the use of the American military in the Caribbean and the bullying of Latin America more broadly.

Senior fellow Michael Baker assesses the situation succinctly: The airstrikes in the Caribbean are “murder in international waters of unknown people and without due process.”

“Members of the Trump administration are like vigilante cops,” says senior fellow Bill Astore. “They think they can enforce the law by breaking the law. In attempting to display toughness, they’re showing moral weakness by murdering people who could well be innocent.”

The White House and the Pentagon have not even released the identities of the people on board or the precise nature of the cargo.

Senior fellow Matthew Hoh recalls the Tom Clancy war novel A Clear and Present Danger, which featured a well-funded covert program against a drug cartel in a Latin American country. “That storyline is now being implemented with one important addition: regime change,” Hoh explains.

“Tom Clancy was a hawk’s hawk, but even he knew the limits of military power, as well as the great dangers that come from a President’s constitutional crimes. Clancy’s story is a tragedy and a cautionary tale, not a triumph.” Citing the United States’ catastrophic military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, Hoh stresses that Washington’s efforts at regime change never end well.

LEGALITY

The legal foundations for murder in the Caribbean are shaky, as Congress has authorized neither missile strikes nor war.

The administration designated the Cartel of the Suns (“Cartel de los Soles”) a terrorist organization and continues to argue that the cartel is a criminal group headed by Venezuelan President Nicholás Maduro. Such a designation triggers an asset freeze and certain travel restrictions. It also demonizes the group and convinces some members of the American public to support attacks on that group.

The administration further argues that it’s self-defense to strike boats that allegedly bring drugs to America.

“Self-defense” is a tried and true pretext for American military activity. It was used to justify bombing Libya in 1986, invading Panama in 1989, bombing Iraq in 1993, invading and occupying Iraq in 2003, and bombing West Asia and Africa (e.g., Syria, Yemen, Somalia).

“In a world where government lies may be easily refuted in seconds, Trump’s initiation of war for Venezuelan oil and resources presented as a war on drugs and made up narco-terror is as illegal as it is embarrassing,” concludes senior fellow Karen Kwiatkowski.

A BIPARTISAN AFFAIR

The American regime’s history of aggression against Latin America is extensive. Washington, D.C., makes sure that no country, especially one in the United States’ “backyard,” opposes the American-led capitalist order or dares to use natural resources to benefit people instead of multinational corporations.

Hugo Chavez attempted to do just that in 1999. A coup soon followed – one which CIA, at the very least, knew about in advance.

It was the Obama administration that originally declared Venezuela to be a national security threat, unlocking many legal authorities, including the imposition of economic sanctions.

The first Trump administration expanded economic sanctions and imposed an embargo barring financial transactions with Venezuelan government officials and freezing all of the government’s assets in America.

The Biden administration then levied more economic sanctions against Venezuelan officials and the oil industry and increased bounties on Venezuelan government officials.

CONGRESS

Long in favor of fully funding nonstop war and worldwide military deployments, including those throughout America’s Southern Command, the Democratic Party has yet to try to rein in the Trump administration’s Caribbean warfare.

enator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) shows the opposition party’s lack of backbone: “We have uniformed military asking their chain of command for letters that ensure that they don’t have personal liability for any illegal action in these operations. I have no problem going after drug traffickers.”

The Nation explains, “In other words, Slotkin’s goal is not to stop Trump’s bombing campaign and possible rush to war with Venezuela but to simply make sure it follows proper legal protocol.”

“The CIA — and the spineless members of Congress who never met a war they didn’t like — remain both consistent and ascendant,” says Kwiatkowski. “The only war Americans need today is the one we must fight against the military-industrial-congressional complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us of almost 65 years ago.”

The military and national security veterans at the Eisenhower Media Network favor diplomatic engagement with Venezuela, not armed conflict or economic warfare.

LEARN THE LOGIC THAT HELPED ISRAELI LIBERALS COMMIT GENOCIDE – ONE TARGET AT A TIME

By Attaching A Military Goal To Each Act Of Killing, Israelis Of All Stripes Could Partake In The Slaughter Without Questioning The Morality Of Their Actions.

A few months after October 7, in an introductory course on genocide at the Open University of Israel. The lecturer began the first class by telling the students — about the students 20 Jewish-Israeli students gathered on Zoom — that by the end of the semester that they would understand exactly what genocide entails and be able to explain why Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza.

In a nutshell, his argument was this: At most, Israel might be destroying Gaza, but its actions are driven by military objectives rather than an “intent to destroy” a specific group “as such,” as the Genocide Convention outlines. Without this intent, he concluded, the term genocide does not apply.

There have been numerous investigations exposing details of Israel’s open-fire policy in Gaza, several of which have helped substantiate legal claims of genocide. When South Africa filed its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024, it relied in part on a November 2023 exposé that revealed Israel’s AI-driven mass assassination campaign targeting the family homes of alleged militants. When a UN committee similarly reached the conclusion last month that Israel has committed genocide, it relied in part on another investigation showing that more than 80 percent of Gaza’s dead were civilians according to an internal Israeli intelligence database.

Yet few of the dozens of soldiers and officers spoken to over the course of these investigations, many of whom served willingly as whistleblowers, saw themselves as participants in genocide. When intelligence officers and commanders described bombing family homes in Gaza, they often echoed the university lecturer’s logic: Sure, we may have committed crimes, but we were not murderers because every act had a specific military objective.

For example, after October 7^th, the army authorized soldiers to kill up to 20 civilians in order to assassinate a suspected low-level Hamas operative, or hundreds of civilians when targeting more senior figures. The vast majority of these assassinations occurred in civilian homes where no military activity was taking place. But for most of the soldiers the mere existence of an alleged military target, even in cases where the intelligence picture was murky, justified virtually any resultant death toll.

In another investigation, a soldier described how his battalion used remote-controlled drones to fire on Palestinian civilians, including women and children, as they tried to return to their destroyed homes in an area occupied by the Israeli army, killing 100 unarmed Palestinians over the course of three months. The goal, he explained, was not to kill them for the sake of it, but to keep the neighborhood empty and thus safer for the soldiers stationed there.

Another soldier recounted participating in the shelling of an entire residential block, comprising more than 10 multi-story apartment buildings and one high-rise all packed with families. She knew beforehand that in doing so she and her crew would likely kill some 300 civilians. But the operation, she explained, was based on intelligence suggesting that a relatively senior Hamas commander might be hiding somewhere beneath one of these buildings. Without more precise information, they destroyed the entire area in the hope of killing him.

The soldier conceded that the attack amounted to a massacre. But in her view, this was not the intention; the goal was to hit the commander, who may not have even been there.

This mission-oriented framing played a crucial role in enabling ordinary Israelis to participate in genocide — perhaps more than obedience alone, which is usually assumed to be the primary motivator in such contexts. By understanding each act of violence as a discrete task, from targeting a Hamas operative to securing a perimeter, soldiers could avoid confronting their role in the mass slaughter of civilians.

This mindset also becomes easier to sustain in an era of artificial intelligence and big data. These technologies can gather and analyze information about an entire population almost instantaneously, mapping buildings and their occupants with purported precision. As such, they produce an endless stream of apparent military justifications, creating a veneer of legality for a policy of mass murder. AI has, in effect, enabled Israel to turn a cornerstone of international law — the obligation to attack only military targets — into a tool that legitimizes and accelerates the very slaughter it was intended to prevent.

OVERLAPPING MOTIVES

As a fragile American-brokered ceasefire takes effect in Gaza, global efforts to ensure accountability and justice will continue in full force. South Africa’s case at the ICJ will rumble on, while Israel and its supporters — including Western governments — will seek to discredit accusations of genocide in order to ward off the legal consequences of such a ruling. In doing so, they will continue to point to the stated military objectives behind every specific attack, as the army does routinely in response to reporting.

The tendency of perpetrators of genocide to invoke “security” as a justification for mass violence is well documented, rationalizing acts of brutality within a broader framework of self-defense. But whatever flimsy excuse is given in each case, Israel’s attacks were undeniably carried out in the full knowledge that they would lead to the destruction of another people. The result is a Palestinian death toll that is thought to exceed 100,000, and the near-total obliteration of the Gaza Strip.

Still, to focus only on how each individual act of violence accumulated to create an overall reality of genocide is also to miss the point. For many of Israel’s leaders, mass death and destruction was the intention. From deliberately starving 2 million people and gunning down aid seekers, to systematically leveling entire cities and actively working toward mass expulsion, the annihilation of the Palestinians of Gaza as a goal in itself was abundantly clear.

Particularly after Israel shattered the previous ceasefire in March, whatever military objectives could be said to have existed became even more tenuous. What remained was a bare murderous logic that the army rarely bothered to justify in military terms.

This motivation was clear not only in deed but also in word. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it in May: “We keep demolishing houses; they have nowhere to return. The only logical outcome will be Gazans’ desire to emigrate outside the Strip.” Ex-military intelligence chief Aharon Haliva went into even blunter detail: “For everything that happened on October 7, for every one of us who died on October 7, 50 Palestinians must die. It doesn’t matter now — children or not. I’m not speaking out of revenge but as a message for future generations. They need a Nakba now and then to feel the price.”

ISRAEL HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF ORGAN THEFT AND GAZA OFFICIALS ARE DEMANDING AN INTERNATIONAL PROBE

Dozens Of Palestinian Bodies Returned By Israeli Authorities Were “Blindfolded, Bound, Crushed Under Tanks, And Missing Corneas, Livers, And Limbs.”

Gaza’s Government Media Office formally accused Israel on October 17^th of stealing organs from Palestinians after Israel returned 120 mutilated bodies following the recent ceasefire, including some who had been tortured to death.

“We formally accuse the Israeli army of stealing organs from the martyrs,” stated Dr. Ismail al-Thawabta, Director General of the Media Office, while demanding an international investigation into Israel’s “torture, mutilation, and organ theft.”

The 120 bodies “arrived in extremely poor and distressing condition,” including blindfolded, bound, crushed under tanks, and missing corneas, livers, and limbs, Thawabta stated.

“The Israeli occupation executed many of them in cold blood. A large number were found blindfolded, with their hands and feet bound, and others showed signs of hanging or close-range gunfire,” he added.

“We also found bodies showing clear evidence of severe torture until death.”

After the release of the bodies, families of missing Palestinians rushed to hospitals—especially Nasser Hospital—trying to see if their relatives were among them. But many remain unidentified and will have to be buried anonymously.

“The health system in Gaza is almost completely collapsed. We lack the equipment for DNA testing and forensic analysis. Some families could only identify their loved ones from personal belongings or clothing. If we cannot identify the rest, we will be forced, sadly, to document and bury them anonymously, to preserve human dignity,” Thawabta added.

According to the Media Office’s data, 9,500 Palestinians remain missing, most of them trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

“Entire families—father, mother, children—remain buried for nearly two years,” the Media Office director stated.

The bodies are difficult to locate due to the sheer amount of destruction Israeli bombing has caused, and because Israel has destroyed almost all of Gaza’s heavy machinery, bulldozers, and excavators, preventing rescue operations.

“Even now, despite the ceasefire, all crossings remain closed, and Israel blocks the entry of rescue machinery. This is a humanitarian catastrophe unprecedented in modern history—over 3,000 families completely wiped out, another 6,000 families killed with only one survivor,” Thawabta added.

In August 2024, Israeli forces returned to Khan Yunis the decomposed bodies of 89 Palestinians in a shipping container.

Authorities were unable to identify the bodies and were forced to bury them in separate body bags in a single large grave near Nasser Hospital.

Israeli forces were also seen taking dozens of bodies from graves and the streets surrounding Al-Shifa Medical Complex and the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip.

Doctors found evidence of organ theft, including missing cochleas and corneas, as well as other vital organs like livers, kidneys, and hearts.

Israel has a long history of stealing the organs of Palestinians.

In 1990, Dr. Hatem Abu Ghazaleh, former chief health official for the West Bank, stated that during the first intifada, “organs, especially eyes and kidneys, were removed from the bodies during the first year or year and a half.”

In 2013, Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom published an article documenting the theft of organs from deceased Palestinians brought to the Israeli National Institute of Forensic Medicine (Abu Kabir) between the First Intifada and the 2012 war in Gaza.

Abu Kabir director and chief pathologist Dr. Yehuda Hiss admitted in a July 2000 interview with American academic Nancy Scheper-Hughes that the institute was secretly taking skin, bones, cardiac valves, corneas, and other human materials from bodies during autopsies.

He described removing not only corneas but whole eyeballs from the bodies of the dead, which would be returned to their families with their eyelids glued shut.

In 1996, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, an influential leader within the fundamentalist Jewish group, Chabad-Lubavitch, claimed that Judaism permits organ theft from non-Jews on the basis that Jewish lives are more important than non-Jewish lives.

“If a Jew needs a liver,” he asked, “can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has infinite value. There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life.

AMERICANS SHOULD NOT BE DIE FOR SAUDI ARABIA OR QATAR

President Donald Trump Should Put All Of The American People, Not Foreign Governments, First. During His First Term, President Donald Trump Unashamedly Put Israel First.

An important part of that policy was the so-called Abraham Accords, by which Washington paid Arab and other Muslim governments to recognize Israel. The American people received nothing of value in return.

The president is continuing his Israel-first policy, bursting with praise for the loathsome Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Far worse, and much more destructive, Trump has unreservedly supported Netanyahu’s brutal wars against Gaza and Lebanon, repression in the West Bank, and aggression against Iran. Trump once joked that “Even Bibi gets tired of war,” but, unfortunately, so far that claim hasn’t proved true. The only serious bilateral hiccup was Israel’s strike on Qatar, an official American regime ally hosting Washington’s largest military base in the Middle East, which also recently donated a lavishly appointed jumbo jet for Trump’s use as the new Air Force One.

Netanyahu’s action offended Trump’s presumption of primacy rather than sense of decency. Even more important than the support of Israel’s backers to the president is his expressed determination “to run” the world. Rather than focus on America’s interests, he has sought to impose his geopolitical vision on friends and foes alike. Hence his outrage at Netanyahu’s attack. Israel can do anything it wants, except interfere with Trump’s globally meddlesome policies. In response to Israel’s insolent strike, the president three weeks ago issued a security guarantee in America’s name for Qatar—an implicit protection measure for Emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and his family.

Worse, the president apparently revived his offer to do the same for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia if it joins the Abraham Accords and recognizes Israel. “I hope to see Saudi Arabia go in, and I hope to see others go in,” the president has said. “I think when Saudi Arabia goes in, everybody goes in.” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly hopes to finalize such an agreement during his scheduled visit to the White House next month. Apparently MbS, as he is known, wants a “Qatar-plus” deal. An unnamed American official explained, “There are discussions about signing something when the crown prince comes, but the details are in flux.”

MbS, who effectively rules in the name of his ailing father, was the first foreign leader visited by the president in 2017 and always has been a Trump favorite. After MbS had critic Jamal Khashoggi murdered and dismembered, Trump proclaimed that he protected the princely killer’s “ass” from accountability. Although these “Abrahamic” agreements have been acclaimed as a diplomatic masterstroke, they are nothing of the sort. They brought peace to no one, since none of the participants were at war with Israel. Indeed, several Persian Gulf and North African states, including Riyadh, had for years covertly cooperated with Jerusalem on security issues without American subsidies or other inducements.

Rather, this diplomatic initiative was an almost entirely malign policy, intended to reinforce Israeli dominance and Palestinian submission. The American ostentatiously turned already oppressed Palestinians over to Israel’s not-so-gentle mercies, to be treated like Spartan Helots, a permanent underclass with neither legal nor political rights. Through the Abraham Accords, participating states essentially accepted Israel as a normal government while abandoning any defense of Palestinians.

Other beleaguered peoples lost out, too. The first Trump administration sacrificed the residents of Western Sahara, once a Spanish colony, by recognizing Morocco’s conquest of the region and suppression of independence aspirations. Washington refused to lift a discredited terrorism designation from post-revolutionary Sudan—which has since collapsed into a devastating civil war—unless it agreed to recognize Israel, against the wishes of a vast majority of its population. The United Arab Emirates demanded additional weapons transfers before making the deal, which it has since enthusiastically embraced. Only Bahrain, with a major American naval base, failed to extort any special privileges from Washington in return.

What always mattered most to Netanyahu was strengthening his political position, preserving his narrow and extremist coalition parliamentary majority, thereby enabling him to continue avoiding trial and potential imprisonment on corruption charges. What matters most to the president is preserving his hold over America’s dwindling but still influential Israel-first constituency. For this, Trump promises that Americans will fight and die on behalf of privileged, corrupt, dissolute, and dictatorial Gulf monarchs.

At least Qatar has not recognized Israel and occasionally advances American interests. While Israel- and Saudi-firsters in America routinely denounce Doha, Washington has encouraged it to host representatives of antagonistic forces such as Hamas and the Taliban, creating indirect communication channels for Washington. Qatar also helped mediate prisoner exchanges between America and Iran, as well as Ukraine and Russia. Although during his first term the president initially backed the Saudi–Emirati campaign to isolate and overthrow the al-Thani monarchy, his administration eventually pushed for a peaceful resolution of the controversy, while the Biden administration designated Doha as a major non-NATO ally. Some 20 countries enjoy this elevated status, but it offers no security guarantee.

Now Trump has dramatically escalated Washington’s commitment. Section two of his executive order directs that:

The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States…
In the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures—including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military—to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.

This promise is akin to NATO’s famed Article 5. Observed David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “The last time we offered anything close to a treaty obligation security commitment was the revision of the 1960 U.S.-Japan treaty.” Thus, Miller added, the president’s action “is no small matter.”

While Trump’s pronouncement does not ensure military intervention—Washington ultimately decides what is “lawful,” “appropriate,” and, most important, “necessary”—the presumption is that America will take military action to defend Qatar, if threatened. Failing to act would be viewed by Doha and other Gulf states as bad faith on Washington’s part. There would be extraordinary pressure on America to act to maintain its “credibility,” if nothing else.

Yet despite its extraordinary wealth and legendary diplomatic prowess, the emirate is not important for American security. Of course, it has a multitude of interests for which it undoubtedly would like the American regime to fight, but that is no reason for Washington to do so. No country threatens to conquer the Gulf, seize Mideast oil, destroy Israel, or otherwise discomfit the American regime, which has become an energy behemoth, and the international market has become much more diverse. Iran poses a potential threat to Doha only as host of America’s air force base, an obvious target for retaliation if Washington again initiates hostilities against Tehran—for which there is no justification.

Israel, committed to dominate the region, poses a more serious threat, but no one believes that the American regime would ever go to war with Israel, even if Jerusalem decided to annihilate the entire Mideast. Washington’s usual suspects would, yet again, piously pronounce that Israel had a right to defend itself, irrespective of the consequences to anyone else. In any case, if a future administration nevertheless wanted to respond to an unlikely “armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar,” it could do so without a formal commitment, but should do so only after due deliberation in response to practical necessity, not reflexively to fulfill a political declaration.

Moreover, Trump’s promise binds no one, not even him. It is a unilateral, unenforceable personal promise. He did not negotiate a formal treaty or win ratification by the Senate, as with Washington’s formal “mutual defense” pacts. There was no congressional, let alone public, debate over the wisdom of committing America to go to war on behalf of someone else. The president is writing checks which the Constitution does not authorize him to cash. Without a congressional declaration of war, the president has no authority to fight over Qatar.

However, having made this commitment, the president cannot easily deny a similar guarantee to the other Gulf states, especially Bahrain, which hosts a major naval installation; Kuwait, which served as a major base for Iraq operations; and simultaneously repressive and aggressive UAE, which Trump’s former Defense Secretary James Mattis admiringly called “Little Sparta.” Adding a unilateral, lawless defense commitment for Saudi Arabia—with which the Trump as well as Biden administrations previously proposed negotiating a formal defense treaty—would be even worse.

The Kingdom, whose residents provided substantial financial support for Al Qaeda and 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers, has long been the region’s most malign actor. For decades, the ruling royals have maintained a totalitarian state at home, repressing political dissent, religious liberty, and personal freedom, and promoting Islamic fundamentalism around the world. Although MbS introduced welcome social liberalization, he intensified the Kingdom’s political controls, leaving the country less free than Iran and Russia and tied with China in Freedom House’s ratings.

Worse, from a security standpoint, the crown prince launched an aggressive war against Yemen, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, backed jihadist insurgents in Syria, who were more brutal than the odious Assad regime, economically isolated and threatened to invade Qatar, deterred only by American diplomatic and Turkish military pressure, subsidized Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s coup against Egypt’s first democratically elected government, leading to a savage political crackdown, and intervened militarily to sustain Bahrain’s dictatorial minority Sunni monarchy, suppressing that country’s Shia majority. Perhaps most bizarrely of all, MbS even kidnapped the visiting Lebanese prime minister, later joking about the crime.

Finally, Washington has filled Saudi Arabia’s bases and arsenals with American weapons. Although the regime treated the purchases as de facto payment for Washington’s implicit security guarantee, the acquisitions should enable the regime to defend itself. If the Kingdom’s own people don’t want to risk their lives for the country’s parasitic royal ruling class, the American people certainly shouldn’t be expected to do so. Perhaps the Saudi royals can pay Pakistan to defend them.

America’s national interest today is best served by restricting, not expanding, its military commitments abroad, especially in the Middle East. The president should retract his promise to Qatar. Failing that, he should treat it as a one-off response to Israel’s wanton disregard for America’s interests as well as international law. He certainly should not risk even more American wealth and lives on behalf of absolute monarchy in the Persian Gulf. Only vital interests can justify such a commitment, and they are absent in the Middle East today.

45 PALESTINIANS WERE KILLED AFTER ISRAEL FLIPPED OUT AFTER RUNNING OVER THEIR OWN BOMB

Killing Palestinians Is So Normalized That CNN Called It The “First Major Test” Of The Ceasefire As Israel Killed People In Gaza Every Single Day Since The Ceasefire.

In today’s news, Israel’s stupid genocidal monsters ran over an unexploded ordnance from their own evil carpet bombing campaign, blamed Hamas for the explosion, started bombing the crap out of Gaza again, killed scores of civilians, said they were once again cutting off aid to the enclave, and then quietly backed down on urging from Washington.

Rather than report that Israel violated the ceasefire agreement as blatantly as any agreement could possibly be violated, the western press have been referring to this as a “test” of the ceasefire. Killing Palestinians is so normalized and accepted as a baseline expectation in the western press that CNN called it the “first major test” of the ceasefire after Israel killed people in Gaza every single day since the ceasefire agreement was signed.

We hope the “WHY AREN’T YOU CELEBRATING?” crowd have gotten their answer by now. We weren’t celebrating because we know more than you. We’ve actually been paying attention, so we know Israel is going to seek out every excuse to kill Palestinians and torch this fake “ceasefire”.

The Israeli government keeps issuing statements making it explicitly clear that Israel will not consider the “war” over until Hamas is fully disarmed and Gaza is fully demilitarized, terms that the Palestinian resistance has explicitly refused. These mutually contradictory positions place Gaza on a collision course toward full-scale reignition of the genocide.

Whenever someone talks about the IDF massacring civilians for inadvertently traveling into zones Israel has banned them from in Gaza, Israel apologists are bleating “but they crossed the Yellow Line!” which one can guess is the new hasbara narrative.

Imagine thinking this is a good argument. Imagine thinking it’s perfectly reasonable to blow up a car full of children if they cross a made-up invisible line.

Think about how dehumanized Palestinians would have to be in your mind to believe this is a sane and reasonable position to have. To feel that deadly force via heavy war machinery is a perfectly fine way of administering crowd control.

Imagine if that was happening in your country. If police just blew up your vehicle if you accidentally turned onto a one-way street or made an unauthorized U-turn. If they could send a drone to go pick you off if you were walking down a street they didn’t think you should be on.

You’d never stand for it. You’d demand they find other ways to direct traffic besides deadly force.

“How about some signs?” you would say. “How about using verbal warnings and loudspeakers? How about road blocks? How about just not murdering a vehicle full of kids for moving in an unauthorized way?”

But because it’s Palestinians, it never occurs to them that this should be the expectation. Palestinians deserve to be executed for the slightest transgression against the most arbitrary restriction.

Israel does this all the time, and its defenders are fine with it. During the aid distribution at GHF sites Israeli soldiers have told the Israeli press that they were ordered to fire upon anyone who moved in an unauthorized way, killing starving civilians every single day for seeking food. During the last “ceasefire” at the beginning of the year civilians would routinely get murdered for taking a donkey cart down the wrong road or whatever.

That’s the sort of thing people support if they stand by Israel. Supporting Israel is an innately racist and murderous position, because you would support murdering Palestinian civilians for reasons you would never accept your own people being killed for.

Israeli right wingers have been filmed literally pushing their babies in front of aid trucks in order to block food from getting to starving civilians.

Israelis are something else.

Israel cannot stop murdering and abusing and sowing chaos and destruction for even one day and the western empire cannot stop supporting it for even an instant, but if you say anything about this people start making up weird stories about you hating the religion of Judaism.

The Trump administration has ordered the repatriation to Colombia and Ecuador of the survivors of its attack on a boat in the Caribbean Sea, which punches some major plot holes in its claim that it has been blowing up these boats because they are full of Venezuelan “narco-terrorists”. The American regime isn’t generally in the habit of sending terrorists home, so it’s clear they targeted innocent people and had no case against them.

Anyone buying into the war propaganda about Venezuela is a moron. The lies are dumb even by usual American regime warmongering standards, and American regime change interventionism is consistently disastrous. People who say they want Trump to remove Maduro are admitting they never grew up.