Disinformation over the blast at Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital worked as planned, taking the focus off the victims and lifting pressure on Israel to stop its rampage
Jonathan, I do not mean this, glibly: you are an inspiration for having the courage & tenacity to keep exposing the massive & relentless nexus of lies & deceits that come from Israel & the disgusting excuses-for-leaders we have in the West - large numbers of Western populations know we are being decieved, I think. They also realise the way media is softening everyone up as this & other conflicts they have started threaten to take us into WWIII.
The Palestinian Ambassador was interviewed on Rory Stewarts podcast The Rest Is Politics and around 54 mins to 56 mins the Ambassador speaks of his sister in the South of Gaza being bombed - after the Israeli instruction to those in the north to leave and move south where they will be safe. Has anybody spoken of that particular horror - the fact Israel told people to move south so they were free to obliterate the north but then proceeded to bomb the south, the border wirh Egypt in particular i read somewhere.resulted in Palestinian deaths, who has spoken about that horror?
Is it possible that the Israeli government was getting tired of having 2 million restive Palestinians in Gaza and secretly paying Hamas (via Qatar) to maintain the unstable status quo? Then on October 7 by deliberately having the IDF turn a blind eye for several hours as Hamas (and possibly other groups) ran riot with the tragic loss of life that entailed, the Israeli government has the opportunity to eliminate those restive Palestinians for good. Is that possible?
I realise it's inconvenient but it was a Hamas rocket. An Israeli missile would have pancaked the entire hospital; not just dislodged a few roof tiles and burnt half a dozen vehicles.
Thank you for the continuous updates Jonathan. So important. Western leaders have lost any credibility. With their media are allowing a genocide as well as the ongoing illegal detention, torture of a publisher who most accurately exposed crimes of this very nature. No ceasefire. Biden is looking more demented. Bernie goes along.
Your video reveals an aspect to the Israeli occupation of which I had been unaware. I thought that running fences through Palestinian farms to separate the fields from the households was pretty damn evil. Well, with eradicating native edible plant species with flammable pines Israel has reached a new pinnacle of malevolence.
Oct 24, 2023·edited Oct 24, 2023Liked by Jonathan Cook
I think there is a despair to your writing here Jonathan, an undeniable and understandable despair the majority of your readers feel also, given the historical events you mention and today's massacre and annihilation of Gaza.
How do we reason with terrorists and their sympathisers when they are fixated only on their self justified right to act as they act?
I read two articles, one by the BBC which surprised me, and the other from The Guardian. The first by the BBC is an account of the Israeli terrorists murdering ordinary Palestinian citizens in the Westbank:
There can be no doubt when reading this BBC report that the Israelis responsible were and likely still are terrorising peaceful Palestinians in these small communities:
"Abed Wadi was getting dressed for the funeral when the message arrived.
It was an image, forwarded to him by a friend, of a group of masked men posing with axes, a petrol canister, and a chainsaw, with text printed on the image in Hebrew and Arabic.
"To all the rats in the sewers of Qusra village, we are waiting for you and we will not mourn you," the text said.
"The day of revenge is coming."
"Qusra was Wadi's village, in the northern part of the West Bank near Nablus. The funeral that day was for four Palestinians from the village. Three had been killed the previous day - Wednesday 11 October - after Israeli settlers entered Qusra and attacked a Palestinian family home.
The fourth was shot dead in clashes with Israeli soldiers that followed.
The following day, the Qusra villagers were preparing to set out for a hospital half an hour away and return with the bodies of the dead. To do so, they would need to travel across land that is dotted with Israeli settlements, where the risk of violence, high even in ordinary times, has risen dramatically in the two weeks since the Hamas attack that launched a war with Israel.
Wadi put his phone down and continued getting dressed. There were four men in refrigerators in the hospital who needed to be brought home. He was not going to be deterred by a threat, he said. He had heard too many.
There was no way for Wadi to know that, in a few hours' time, hardline Israeli settlers would confront the funeral procession and his own brother and young nephew would be shot dead."
Leaving the language of these Israeli terrorists aside, language that dehumanises their targets to vermin, the very language used by 1930's Germany when justifying their terrorisation of these Israeli terrorists ancestors, leaving that horrifying reality aside, The Guardian also wrote about the Westbank with a striking headline which at first confused me greatly - were they celebrating the terrorist acts of Israeli 'settlers'? Celebrating war crimes?
It appears not, but it took me a few reads to be convinced of that.
It perhaps again comes down to the power of words chosen when describing these terrorist Israeli groups as 'radical settlers':
"The unlikely agents of this land grab are sheep and goats, herded by radical settlers on small outposts.
Taking land by building homes and communities on it is slow and expensive. Taking control of large swathes of dry hills needed to feed a herd of animals, by intimidating and isolating Palestinian shepherds and bringing in another herd, is much more efficient.
“This has been the most successful land-grab strategy since 1967,” said Yehuda Shaul, a prominent activist who is director of the Israeli Center for Public Affairs thinktank, and a founder of Breaking the Silence, an NGO that exposes military abuses in occupied areas."
And the confusing soft language goes on and on - I finally understand why, in the pre Internet age when I was the age my youngest is now, 14 years old, I could not make sense of what was happening in these far away places. My dad would try but fail, and even now with all the perspective and knowledge I have gained, even now being a not so common British female citizen interested enough in a humane world to try and understand, even with all that to my credit I find this report in The Guardian very confusing exactly because of its intent to confuse and play down the terrorism inflicted upon the Palestinian communities by Israel, exactly because they refuse to call out Israeli acts of terror.
"Over the last year alone, 110,000 dunams, or 110 sq km (42 sq miles), was effectively annexed by settlers on herding outposts, he said. All the built-up settlement areas constructed since 1967 cover only 80 sq km.
It was also the biggest displacement of Palestinian Bedouins since 1972, when at least 5,000 – and perhaps as many as 20,000 – people were moved from the northern Sinai to make way for settlements, Shaul added.
Settlers and their political allies have celebrated this relatively new approach.
“One action that we’ve expanded over the years is the shepherding farms,” Ze’ev “Zambish” Hever, the secretary general of the settler organisation Amana, told a 2021 conference.
“Today they cover close to twice the land that the built-up communities cover … we understand the significance of the matter: see, it is a lot.”
'Celebrated' ? - the power of words and the lack of condemnation for Israeli terrorist acts is pretty clear.
And then there is more from the Guardian again, this time a report telling us the testimony of anti-war Israeli peace activists:
It seems the Israeli villages, which Palestinian freedom fighters took hostages from, and where we now hear in the Israeli womans testimony, Israeli armed forces indiscriminately murdered Israeli hostaes, Israeli peace activists, along with the Palestinian freedom fighters:
“In the communities affected in the south, the kibbutzim, where people were injured and kidnapped and slaughtered by Hamas, so many of them fought for peace, so many of them were dreaming of a different future,” said Avner Gvaryahu, the executive director of Breaking the Silence, a group founded by Israeli combat veterans to document military abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“There are members of all the leading human rights organisations that are kidnapped or dead or injured or traumatised.”
Hayim (the brother referred to in the headline) was one of the former IDF soldiers who testified for Breaking the Silence, which is banned from Israeli schools, has been vilified by many in the government and faced arson attacks for its work.
An academic who researched the religious right in Israel, he spent time with Palestinian farming communities in the occupied South Hebron hills, offering through his presence some protection from the Israeli military, police and settlers in the area.
Other victims from the kibbutzim clustered close to Gaza include Shlomi and Shachar Matias, a couple who helped found a bilingual school that taught children in Hebrew and Arabic, under the slogan: Jewish Arab education for equality.
Vivian Silver, a core member of Women Wage Peace, was taken hostage in Gaza. She also helped organise travel for Palestinians in Gaza given rare permission to leave the strip for medical treatment. "
Credit must be allowed here, not the usual BBC / Guardian tripe or bias but actual information. Yes, the Guardian's choice of words demonise the freedom fighters, but get past that and this report reveals a strong motivation for murdering peace activists more easily linked to Netanyahu's government than it is to any Palestinian.
Did Netanyahu order the massacre of Israeli dissenters?
There is a pretty good stack of evidence building to say he might have done just that.
God speed Jonathan, stay strong, and keep writing.
You say that “killing of children is when the world briefly wakes up to Palestinian suffering before turning off again.”
That is no longer the case, remember Madeline Albright’s response to the half million deaths of children during the Iraq war, “I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.” I am afraid that the west sees all non white children deaths through the same eyes.
That the MSM only slavishly echoes Israel's ACTUAL disinformation while boasting "fact checks" etc etc shows how rotten, corrupt and shameless the "legacy media" really is.
I want it to be from Israel, too, but I have been studying the evidence and unfortunately, looks it may indeed be from Gaza:
1. The small crater doesn't fit the pattern for an Israeli missile, suggesting it may not be one.
2. Doppler analysis points to Israel, but multiple cameras show a rocket fired from Gaza, veering back due to a malfunction. The Doppler analysis actually is consistent: aligns with the direction from Israel, but it only considers the last audio trace, not the entire sequence. Multiple camera recordings show a rocket initially launched from Gaza (one of the cameras from Al Jazeera inside Gaza), changing its course back due to an operational failure, which is consistent with the visual evidence. Look at it.
3. Hamas claimed to have Israeli machinery remains but didn't show them, quickly cleaning any debris. Showing the evidence could have had a significant impact.
4. Past Israeli lies don't automatically mean present lies. They do not definitively prove that it was a Palestinian missile or blast. Each situation should be considered independently, and it's essential to assess the credibility of the current information. Past behavior can be a factor in evaluating someone's trustworthiness, but it should not be the sole basis for determining the truthfulness of their current statements or actions.
5. the shape of the crater is from the East, from within Gaza, and its shallowness consistent with impact from a failed rocket.
Excellent piece Jonathan, Please keep this great journalism coming and I will keep sharing it in various groups in Australia. So many people as you say are completely sucked in by MSM and Israeli propaganda. I feel the worm is slowly turning as the good citizens of the world are increasingly turning to alternative media outlets like yourself, The Grayzone, Chris Hedges, Russel Brand, Jimmy Dore, Redacted and a brilliant podcast - Judging Freedom.
Look at these perversions, disgusting human stain.
As the Israel-Hamas war continues, John Oliver has noticed that some members of the media “seem way too comfortable with” the war. One of the people who caught the “Last Week Tonight” host’s attention was a retired U.S. brigadier-general who advocated for a “war crime” while being interviewed by CNN.
During a segment on the news network, retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Steven Anderson, an analyst who has appeared on CNN multiple times, said that Israel needs to circle Gaza and apply pressure to the region using the blockade they’ve established. “The people are going to suffer,” Anderson said, before noting that the Palestinian people would eventually give up Hamas.
“Does that mean starve the Palestinian people?” an incredulous Victor Blackwell asked on the air. “Because they will be so hungry and so desperate for water and medicine that then they will give up Hamas?”
“It sounds callous, but, I mean, this is a war,” Anderson said in the clip.
“It is a war, but what you’re describing is a war crime and one thing does not justify the other,” Oliver said at the top of Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight.”
The late night host also asked his audience to “spare a thought” for Blackwell, noting that he “probably didn’t get up that morning thinking he’d have to gently explain you can’t starve people to a former U.S. military official.”
Oliver then spent the rest of the episode mocking the Republican party in their ongoing search for Speaker of the House, breaking down the federal corruption charges around New Jersey senator Bob Menendez and diving into management consultant firms like McKinsey.
Jonathan, I do not mean this, glibly: you are an inspiration for having the courage & tenacity to keep exposing the massive & relentless nexus of lies & deceits that come from Israel & the disgusting excuses-for-leaders we have in the West - large numbers of Western populations know we are being decieved, I think. They also realise the way media is softening everyone up as this & other conflicts they have started threaten to take us into WWIII.
Thank you once again.
The Palestinian Ambassador was interviewed on Rory Stewarts podcast The Rest Is Politics and around 54 mins to 56 mins the Ambassador speaks of his sister in the South of Gaza being bombed - after the Israeli instruction to those in the north to leave and move south where they will be safe. Has anybody spoken of that particular horror - the fact Israel told people to move south so they were free to obliterate the north but then proceeded to bomb the south, the border wirh Egypt in particular i read somewhere.resulted in Palestinian deaths, who has spoken about that horror?
https://youtu.be/AtsTsCFxrNI?si=zxdOmau6H77bN61f
I've only ever seen these war crimes played out in dystopian books and films such as the hunger games!
Who is holding the UN to account and forcing Israels long list of war crimes to be tried?
I am beyond exasperated and cannot for one moment imagine the terror the Palestinian people are forced to live through whilst the world looks on.
Undeniably true, Pat.
Is it possible that the Israeli government was getting tired of having 2 million restive Palestinians in Gaza and secretly paying Hamas (via Qatar) to maintain the unstable status quo? Then on October 7 by deliberately having the IDF turn a blind eye for several hours as Hamas (and possibly other groups) ran riot with the tragic loss of life that entailed, the Israeli government has the opportunity to eliminate those restive Palestinians for good. Is that possible?
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/uyb3bg53b5wh9wa3co8do/Gaza-Timeline-and-Inconsistency-Report.pdf?rlkey=k8c791ncqmspkr92ul9rvh1fm&dl=0
@RobertLindsay It's too big to send by email but I can send you the dropbox link to download.
I realise it's inconvenient but it was a Hamas rocket. An Israeli missile would have pancaked the entire hospital; not just dislodged a few roof tiles and burnt half a dozen vehicles.
Thank you for the continuous updates Jonathan. So important. Western leaders have lost any credibility. With their media are allowing a genocide as well as the ongoing illegal detention, torture of a publisher who most accurately exposed crimes of this very nature. No ceasefire. Biden is looking more demented. Bernie goes along.
Your video reveals an aspect to the Israeli occupation of which I had been unaware. I thought that running fences through Palestinian farms to separate the fields from the households was pretty damn evil. Well, with eradicating native edible plant species with flammable pines Israel has reached a new pinnacle of malevolence.
I think there is a despair to your writing here Jonathan, an undeniable and understandable despair the majority of your readers feel also, given the historical events you mention and today's massacre and annihilation of Gaza.
How do we reason with terrorists and their sympathisers when they are fixated only on their self justified right to act as they act?
I read two articles, one by the BBC which surprised me, and the other from The Guardian. The first by the BBC is an account of the Israeli terrorists murdering ordinary Palestinian citizens in the Westbank:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67173344
There can be no doubt when reading this BBC report that the Israelis responsible were and likely still are terrorising peaceful Palestinians in these small communities:
"Abed Wadi was getting dressed for the funeral when the message arrived.
It was an image, forwarded to him by a friend, of a group of masked men posing with axes, a petrol canister, and a chainsaw, with text printed on the image in Hebrew and Arabic.
"To all the rats in the sewers of Qusra village, we are waiting for you and we will not mourn you," the text said.
"The day of revenge is coming."
"Qusra was Wadi's village, in the northern part of the West Bank near Nablus. The funeral that day was for four Palestinians from the village. Three had been killed the previous day - Wednesday 11 October - after Israeli settlers entered Qusra and attacked a Palestinian family home.
The fourth was shot dead in clashes with Israeli soldiers that followed.
The following day, the Qusra villagers were preparing to set out for a hospital half an hour away and return with the bodies of the dead. To do so, they would need to travel across land that is dotted with Israeli settlements, where the risk of violence, high even in ordinary times, has risen dramatically in the two weeks since the Hamas attack that launched a war with Israel.
Wadi put his phone down and continued getting dressed. There were four men in refrigerators in the hospital who needed to be brought home. He was not going to be deterred by a threat, he said. He had heard too many.
There was no way for Wadi to know that, in a few hours' time, hardline Israeli settlers would confront the funeral procession and his own brother and young nephew would be shot dead."
Leaving the language of these Israeli terrorists aside, language that dehumanises their targets to vermin, the very language used by 1930's Germany when justifying their terrorisation of these Israeli terrorists ancestors, leaving that horrifying reality aside, The Guardian also wrote about the Westbank with a striking headline which at first confused me greatly - were they celebrating the terrorist acts of Israeli 'settlers'? Celebrating war crimes?
It appears not, but it took me a few reads to be convinced of that.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/21/the-most-successful-land-grab-strategy-since-1967-as-settlers-push-bedouins-off-west-bank-territory
It perhaps again comes down to the power of words chosen when describing these terrorist Israeli groups as 'radical settlers':
"The unlikely agents of this land grab are sheep and goats, herded by radical settlers on small outposts.
Taking land by building homes and communities on it is slow and expensive. Taking control of large swathes of dry hills needed to feed a herd of animals, by intimidating and isolating Palestinian shepherds and bringing in another herd, is much more efficient.
“This has been the most successful land-grab strategy since 1967,” said Yehuda Shaul, a prominent activist who is director of the Israeli Center for Public Affairs thinktank, and a founder of Breaking the Silence, an NGO that exposes military abuses in occupied areas."
And the confusing soft language goes on and on - I finally understand why, in the pre Internet age when I was the age my youngest is now, 14 years old, I could not make sense of what was happening in these far away places. My dad would try but fail, and even now with all the perspective and knowledge I have gained, even now being a not so common British female citizen interested enough in a humane world to try and understand, even with all that to my credit I find this report in The Guardian very confusing exactly because of its intent to confuse and play down the terrorism inflicted upon the Palestinian communities by Israel, exactly because they refuse to call out Israeli acts of terror.
"Over the last year alone, 110,000 dunams, or 110 sq km (42 sq miles), was effectively annexed by settlers on herding outposts, he said. All the built-up settlement areas constructed since 1967 cover only 80 sq km.
It was also the biggest displacement of Palestinian Bedouins since 1972, when at least 5,000 – and perhaps as many as 20,000 – people were moved from the northern Sinai to make way for settlements, Shaul added.
Settlers and their political allies have celebrated this relatively new approach.
“One action that we’ve expanded over the years is the shepherding farms,” Ze’ev “Zambish” Hever, the secretary general of the settler organisation Amana, told a 2021 conference.
“Today they cover close to twice the land that the built-up communities cover … we understand the significance of the matter: see, it is a lot.”
'Celebrated' ? - the power of words and the lack of condemnation for Israeli terrorist acts is pretty clear.
And then there is more from the Guardian again, this time a report telling us the testimony of anti-war Israeli peace activists:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/19/do-not-use-our-death-to-bring-death-plea-to-israel-from-peace-activists-grieving-families
It seems the Israeli villages, which Palestinian freedom fighters took hostages from, and where we now hear in the Israeli womans testimony, Israeli armed forces indiscriminately murdered Israeli hostaes, Israeli peace activists, along with the Palestinian freedom fighters:
“In the communities affected in the south, the kibbutzim, where people were injured and kidnapped and slaughtered by Hamas, so many of them fought for peace, so many of them were dreaming of a different future,” said Avner Gvaryahu, the executive director of Breaking the Silence, a group founded by Israeli combat veterans to document military abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“There are members of all the leading human rights organisations that are kidnapped or dead or injured or traumatised.”
Hayim (the brother referred to in the headline) was one of the former IDF soldiers who testified for Breaking the Silence, which is banned from Israeli schools, has been vilified by many in the government and faced arson attacks for its work.
An academic who researched the religious right in Israel, he spent time with Palestinian farming communities in the occupied South Hebron hills, offering through his presence some protection from the Israeli military, police and settlers in the area.
Other victims from the kibbutzim clustered close to Gaza include Shlomi and Shachar Matias, a couple who helped found a bilingual school that taught children in Hebrew and Arabic, under the slogan: Jewish Arab education for equality.
Vivian Silver, a core member of Women Wage Peace, was taken hostage in Gaza. She also helped organise travel for Palestinians in Gaza given rare permission to leave the strip for medical treatment. "
Credit must be allowed here, not the usual BBC / Guardian tripe or bias but actual information. Yes, the Guardian's choice of words demonise the freedom fighters, but get past that and this report reveals a strong motivation for murdering peace activists more easily linked to Netanyahu's government than it is to any Palestinian.
Did Netanyahu order the massacre of Israeli dissenters?
There is a pretty good stack of evidence building to say he might have done just that.
God speed Jonathan, stay strong, and keep writing.
Wish I had seen this before I posted my last substack, I would have added a link.
You say that “killing of children is when the world briefly wakes up to Palestinian suffering before turning off again.”
That is no longer the case, remember Madeline Albright’s response to the half million deaths of children during the Iraq war, “I think that is a very hard choice,” Albright answered, “but the price, we think, the price is worth it.” I am afraid that the west sees all non white children deaths through the same eyes.
That the MSM only slavishly echoes Israel's ACTUAL disinformation while boasting "fact checks" etc etc shows how rotten, corrupt and shameless the "legacy media" really is.
I want it to be from Israel, too, but I have been studying the evidence and unfortunately, looks it may indeed be from Gaza:
1. The small crater doesn't fit the pattern for an Israeli missile, suggesting it may not be one.
2. Doppler analysis points to Israel, but multiple cameras show a rocket fired from Gaza, veering back due to a malfunction. The Doppler analysis actually is consistent: aligns with the direction from Israel, but it only considers the last audio trace, not the entire sequence. Multiple camera recordings show a rocket initially launched from Gaza (one of the cameras from Al Jazeera inside Gaza), changing its course back due to an operational failure, which is consistent with the visual evidence. Look at it.
3. Hamas claimed to have Israeli machinery remains but didn't show them, quickly cleaning any debris. Showing the evidence could have had a significant impact.
4. Past Israeli lies don't automatically mean present lies. They do not definitively prove that it was a Palestinian missile or blast. Each situation should be considered independently, and it's essential to assess the credibility of the current information. Past behavior can be a factor in evaluating someone's trustworthiness, but it should not be the sole basis for determining the truthfulness of their current statements or actions.
5. the shape of the crater is from the East, from within Gaza, and its shallowness consistent with impact from a failed rocket.
You can watch the last analyses and evidence here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6HcaYiuCK8&ab_channel=TheWallStreetJournal
Excellent piece Jonathan, Please keep this great journalism coming and I will keep sharing it in various groups in Australia. So many people as you say are completely sucked in by MSM and Israeli propaganda. I feel the worm is slowly turning as the good citizens of the world are increasingly turning to alternative media outlets like yourself, The Grayzone, Chris Hedges, Russel Brand, Jimmy Dore, Redacted and a brilliant podcast - Judging Freedom.
https://www.thewrap.com/last-week-tonight-john-oliver-cnn-war-crime-gaza/
Look at these perversions, disgusting human stain.
As the Israel-Hamas war continues, John Oliver has noticed that some members of the media “seem way too comfortable with” the war. One of the people who caught the “Last Week Tonight” host’s attention was a retired U.S. brigadier-general who advocated for a “war crime” while being interviewed by CNN.
During a segment on the news network, retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Steven Anderson, an analyst who has appeared on CNN multiple times, said that Israel needs to circle Gaza and apply pressure to the region using the blockade they’ve established. “The people are going to suffer,” Anderson said, before noting that the Palestinian people would eventually give up Hamas.
“Does that mean starve the Palestinian people?” an incredulous Victor Blackwell asked on the air. “Because they will be so hungry and so desperate for water and medicine that then they will give up Hamas?”
“It sounds callous, but, I mean, this is a war,” Anderson said in the clip.
“It is a war, but what you’re describing is a war crime and one thing does not justify the other,” Oliver said at the top of Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight.”
The late night host also asked his audience to “spare a thought” for Blackwell, noting that he “probably didn’t get up that morning thinking he’d have to gently explain you can’t starve people to a former U.S. military official.”
Oliver then spent the rest of the episode mocking the Republican party in their ongoing search for Speaker of the House, breaking down the federal corruption charges around New Jersey senator Bob Menendez and diving into management consultant firms like McKinsey.