Some of the U.S. sanctions can be quickly terminated because they were issued by Executive Order. Other sanctions, including the extremely damaging 2019 “Caesar” sanctions, were imposed by Congressional legislation and may require Congressional action to terminate.

The Syrian people are joyous at the prospect of the end of their country’s economic nightmare. In 2010, before the conflict began, Syria was a middle-income country with free education, free healthcare, and no national debt. It was largely self-sufficient in energy and food. After fourteen years of war, occupation, and strangulating Western sanctions, the U.N. reports that “nine out of ten Syrians live in poverty and face food insecurity”.

Why Syria Was Targeted

In 2007, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, General Wesley Clark, publicly revealed that Washington neo-cons had a hit list of seven countries to be overthrown in the wake of 9-11. The list included Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Iran.

The list is essentially the same as that identified by Benjamin Netanyahu in his 1995 book Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat the International Terrorist Network. The premise of this book is that Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements are “terrorist,” and any nation that supports them should be overthrown. He targets Iran, Libya, Syria, and Sudan for supporting Palestinian rights and says. “Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into dust.”

In 2007, Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi visited Syria and tried to persuade Assad to end Syria’s support of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements. When Assad would not comply with US and Israeli wishes, Syria was marked for regime change. The Netanyahu and neo-conservative hit list had somehow been adopted by the Western foreign policy establishment. This was confirmed by the former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas. In a 2013 interview he says, “I went to England almost two years before the start of hostilities (2011). I met British officials, some of whom are friends of mine. They confessed, while trying to persuade me, that preparations for something were underway in Syria. This was in England, not the US. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria…. This operation goes way back. It was prepared, conceived, and planned for the purpose of overthrowing the Syrian government because … this regime has an anti-Israeli stance.”

Hybrid Warfare against Syria

The overthrow of the Syrian government was not easy. It involved massive funding from seven countries (USA, UK, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE). In the early years, the CIA budget alone was $1 billion per year. The campaign included military, diplomatic, media/information and economic warfare.

The regime change operation began in March 2011. While part of the population was hostile to the Assad dynasty, the majority supported the government and a secular Syria. The opposition came largely from sectarian jihadist elements, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Hundreds of factions and cells were supplied and funded by a host of countries, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the U.S., and the UK. Thousands of foreigners were recruited and provided access to Syria.

The political and media war on the Assad government was intense. Historian Stephen Kinzer wrote, “Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press.”

Accusations that the Assad government used chemical weapons against civilians were widely broadcast in the West. They were used to justify Western bombing attacks on Syria. Acclaimed U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh uncovered evidence that the chemical weapons attacks were by the opposition, aided by Turkey, NOT by the Assad government. He had to go abroad to have the explosive article published.

The dubious chemical weapons accusations and US driven political corruption of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are now exposed in a February 2025 book by one of the technical professionals from the OPCW. The book is titled The Syria Scam: An insider look into Chemical Weapons, Geopolitics and the Fog of War.

By the end of 2018, the Syrian army had largely defeated the diverse jihadists. However, instead of conquering or expelling the opposition, Syria allowed them to have a safe haven in Idlib province on the border with Turkey. With Turkey, Iran and Russia seeking to find a solution through the Astana Accords, the conflict was frozen, and the jihadists were allowed to regain strength. Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) became the de facto leader of the opposition factions and the government of Idlib.

The Frozen Conflict

In 2019, the U.S. turned the screws on Syria and escalated attacks on Lebanon. The extreme Caesar sanctions did what they were intended to do. They crushed the Syrian currency and economy, made it impossible to rebuild, and impoverished the vast majority of Syrians. The spreading poverty and inability to counteract it led to widespread demoralization and dissatisfaction. With consummate cynicism, the “Caesar” sanctions were named the “Caesar Civilian Protection Act”.

Meanwhile, in the HTS safe haven of Idlib province on the Turkish border to the north, conditions were very different. Although HTS was designated a terrorist organization in the U.S. and the West, they were helped economically. The HTS fighters were trained and supplied with modern military weaponry, including drones, sophisticated communications equipment, etc.. Very recently, when people from Damascus traveled to Idlib, they were shocked to find new highways, Wi-Fi widely available, and electricity 24 hours a day. Teacher salaries are ten times higher in Idlib than in Damascus.

The Fall of Damascus

With a demoralized population and Syrian army, the Assad government fell in a few weeks, and HTS, led by Ahmad Al Sharaa, took power on 8 December 2024. The new leader of Syria has been greeted and endorsed by the Gulf monarchies and Western countries that paid for and promoted the overthrow in Syria: the UK, Germany, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and of course, Turkey.

Since the change, there have been numerous sectarian massacres of Alawites and Christians along the coast.

There have been attacks on Druze in Damascus. To date, there have been no punishments for the massacres of civilians. A nun reports, “there is no security” in Damascus or elsewhere in Syria.

Meanwhile, Israel has invaded and occupied all of the Golan and parts of southern Syria. They have built military bases in Quneitra and other strategic locations. Israel has carried out a bombing blitzkrieg, destroying all known Syrian ammunition depots. Israel can now fly over any part of Syria at will.

Instead of condemning the Israeli violation of Syrian land and airspace, Ahmad al Sharaa has criticized Iran and Hezbollah. In recent weeks, the new Syrian regime has arrested Palestinian leaders and closed their offices in Damascus. The normalization of relations with the Zionist state has begun.

Lifting Sanctions on Syria

Of course, the sanctions on Syria should be lifted. They never should have been imposed.

U.S. sanctions, known officially as “unilateral coercive measures”, are condemned by the vast majority of world nations. Over 70% of the world’ nations say that US sanctions are “contrary to international law, international humanitarian law, the Charter of the UN and the norms and principles governing peaceful relations among States.”

Without exaggeration, the West and their allies sponsored terrorism in Syria through Al Qaeda and other fanatical violent terrorist groups. They destroyed a once prosperous and independent nation. With a diverse Syrian population ruled by a sectarian leadership prone to violence, there may be more dark days ahead. While Israel, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies are pleased with the removal of the Assad government, a very heavy price has been paid by the majority of Syrians. And the cost is ongoing.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Rick Sterling.

In their legal submission, they say “the proscription has hindered the group’s ability to broker a political solution to the conflict, stifled conversations in securing a long-term political settlement, criminalised ordinary Palestinians residing in Gaza, and undermined the possibility of a peaceful settlement”.

They also argue that being branded terrorists infringes fundamental rights and has a disproportionate impact on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and open debate and political expression, which makes sensible journalism and public discourse on Israel’s actions in Palestine impossible.

Hamas’s submission also points out that Britain’s Terrorism Act “covers all groups and organisations around the world that use violence to achieve political objectives, including the Israeli armed forces, the Ukrainian Army and, indeed, the British armed forces”.

And it claims proscription obstructs humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip because any form of assistance can be labelled “terrorism” if it is “seen as supporting a group that has been labelled a terrorist organisation”.

On the other hand, proscribing Hamas was a clever move because it makes it so much easier for Israel’s stooges at Westminster to avoid having to explain that regime’s far worse war crimes and crimes against humanity. We have to thank Priti Patel who, while International Development Secretary, was so taken-in by Zionist claptrap and so adoring of Israel that, in 2017, she reportedly had around a dozen meetings with Israeli politicians and organisations during a family holiday in Israel without telling the Foreign Office, her civil servants or her boss Theresa May, and without government officials present. This was not only a middle finger to the Ministerial Code of Conduct but a gross breach of security.

She was also said to have tried persuading colleagues to send British taxpayers’ money as aid for an Israeli forces project in the Golan Heights…. and she actually visited the Golan. As everyone and his dog knows, the Golan Heights is Syrian territory stolen in 1967 by the Israelis who have illegally occupied it ever since. Touring it with the thieving occupation army was another serious diplomatic blunder.

Patel’s meetings are said to have been arranged by Lord Polak, an official of the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the 1980s who joined the Conservative Friends of Israel in 1989, and served as its director for 26 years until appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for political service and made a life peer. It’s difficult to see what political service Polak performed for anyone other than the Israeli regime.

Patel was forced to resign but later restored to favour and promoted to Home Secretary. She proscribed Hamas’s political wing in 2021 with hardly a murmur of opposition. There seemed no legitimate reason for doing so unless it was part of the UK/US/Israel axis aim to bring about coercive regime change. But would that be legal? Are the Palestinians to be denied self-determination and the right to choose their own government? Well, yes, so it seems.

What’s to fear from Hamas?

No-one in the UK Government has properly explained, probably because no-one has bothered to sit down and shoot the breeze with them. Instead they eagerly welcome Netanyahu and his thugs with red-carpet hugs, handshakes and vows of affection and endless co-operation, and soak up the nonsense they talk.

And has anyone at Westminster bothered to read Hamas’s 2017 Charter? If so, did they notice Sections 16 and 20? They are reasonably in tune with international law while the Israeli government pursues policies that definitely are not.

16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
17. Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.

Under international law the correct way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is (and always has been) by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and theft of Palestinian resources.

JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace), who claim to be the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world, said of the genocide in Gaza: “We’re organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of US Jews into solidarity with Palestinian freedom struggle.” Here’s an extract from their no-nonsense statement on the hostilities in Palestine.

“The Israeli government may have just declared war, but its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence. Reality is shaped by when you start the clock.

For the past year, the most racist, fundamentalist, far-right government in Israeli history has ruthlessly escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, unrelenting siege and daily humiliation. In recent weeks, Israeli forces repeatedly stormed the holiest Muslim sites in Jerusalem.

For 16 years, the Israeli government has suffocated Palestinians in Gaza under a draconian air, sea and land military blockade, imprisoning and starving two million people and denying them medical aid. The Israeli government routinely massacres Palestinians in Gaza; ten-year-olds who live in Gaza have already been traumatized by seven major bombing campaigns in their short lives.

For 75 years, the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation over Palestinians, operating an apartheid regime. Palestinian children are dragged from their beds in pre-dawn raids by Israeli soldiers and held without charge in Israeli military prisons. Palestinians’ homes are torched by mobs of Israeli settlers, or destroyed by the Israeli army. Entire Palestinian villages are forced to flee, abandoning the homes orchards, and land that were in their family for generations.

The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to US complicity in the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation. The US government consistently enables Israeli violence and bears blame for this moment. The unchecked military funding, diplomatic cover, and billions of dollars of private money flowing from the US enables and empowers Israel’s apartheid regime.”

The Zionists’ Dalet Plan, or Plan D

It’s not just America’s complicity and Britain’s 110-years of betrayal that have brought us to this appalling situation. Plan D was the Zionists’ terror blueprint for their brutal takeover of the Palestinian homeland drawn up 77 years ago by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency, and relentless pursued by the Israeli regime to this day.

Plan D was a carefully thought-out, step-by-step plot choreographed ahead of the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood. It correctly assumed that the British authorities would no longer be there.

It’s a sign of the shoddy times we live in that the lawyers involved in the appeal case felt obliged to state that Hamas did not pay them or the experts who provided evidence for their submission, as it is illegal to receive funds from a group designated as a terrorist organisation.

Hopefully their appeal will skewer the Government’s utter hypocrisy and undying support for the real terrorists in the Holy Land. Priti Patel will have to reckon with the consequences of her actions in terms of the huge numbers of innocent lives lost or reduced to unimaginable misery.

I hasten to add that I am no supporter of Hamas. I support truth and justice, simple as that. And of course the Laws of Cricket.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.

Fijian peacekeepers in the Middle East “are secure and accounted for,” the country’s Defence and Veteran Affairs Minister Pio Tikoduadua confirmed today.

Tikoduadua said Fiji had troops deployed in the Golan Heights under the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) and the UN Truce Supervision Organisation (UNSTO).

He said they remained safe amid the recent developments in Syria and the surrounding region.

• READ MORE:  US officials talked about merits of removing $10m bounty on Syrian rebel leader
• Other Fiji peacekeepers

The minister said he had been briefed on the situation by the commander of the Joint Task Force Command and the country’s representatives in the Golan Heights.

He said robust contingency plans were in place to safeguard troops should the security situation change.

The security situation remained calm but tense, and there was no immediate threat to Fijian peacekeepers.

“I wish to commend the bravery and professionalism of our troops serving in these challenging conditions,” he said.

“Their dedication demonstrates Fiji’s long-standing commitment to international peacekeeping and security.”

He further assured the families of Fijian peacekeepers that the government was committed to the safety and wellbeing of its personnel.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Ismail Haniyeh during a video statement marking the 34th anniversary of the founding of the Hamas movement, December 2021. (Hamas Chief Office)

Hamas announced early Wednesday that Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Palestinian faction’s political wing, was assassinated in Tehran, where he was present for the inauguration of the new Iranian president.

The assassination, in Iran no less, marks a major escalation that will likely have regional ramifications and came hours after Israel bombed Lebanon on Tuesday evening, killing three civilians, according to Lebanese state media. Israel claimed that it killed a senior Hizballah figure in the strike, but the Lebanese resistance group had not issued a statement on the matter at the time of publication.

Israel killed multiple members representing multiple generations of Haniyeh’s family in Gaza since October. Several leaders of Hamas have been assassinated by Israel before Haniyeh, only to be replaced and for the organization’s capabilities to grow.

In January, Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of Hamas’ politburo, was killed in a strike in Beirut along with several other cadres and commanders with the group.

Two weeks ago, Israel claimed to have killed Muhammad Deif, the secretive head of Hamas’ armed wing, in a strike in Gaza that killed at least 90 Palestinians in an area it had unilaterally declared as a humanitarian zone.

Israel continued to wage attacks across Gaza by air, land and sea amid heavy fighting and ground incursions on Tuesday.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday that 37 people had been killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 39,400 since early October.

The actual number of fatalities is likely much higher, with thousands of people missing under the rubble or their bodies not yet recovered from Gaza’s streets.

The Israeli military withdrew from eastern Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza, on Tuesday following an incursion lasting eight days and forcing another wave of mass displacement from the area.

Palestinians returned to Khan Younis to find evidence of what the government media office in Gaza described as “horrific massacres” for which it demanded international accountability.

“Palestinian rescue workers and civilians collected dead bodies from the streets of the abandoned battle zone, bringing corpses wrapped in rugs to morgues in cars and donkey carts,” Reuters reported.

The government media office said that the bodies of 255 people had been recovered and more than 30 others were missing.

During the incursion, the Israeli military fired on 31 homes with their residents inside, as well as more than 300 other homes and residential buildings.

The military also razed the cemetery in Bani Suheila and its surroundings on the eastern outskirts of Khan Younis:

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??? ??? ????? ???? ????? ??? ??? ??????? ???????? ?????? ????? ?????? ??? ??? ?? ??????? ???? ????… pic.twitter.com/8uqmdsbu1V

— EekadFacts | ????? (@EekadFacts) July 30, 2024

Nearly all of Gaza under evacuation orders

Israel meanwhile issued new forced displacement orders in al-Bureij, central Gaza, “launching strikes there in apparent preparation for a new raid,” according to Reuters.

“Medics said an Israeli air strike in nearby al-Nuseirat killed 10 Palestinians as they fled from Bureij on Tuesday, and another strike killed four other Palestinians inside Bureij,” the news agency added.

More than 85 percent of the territory of Gaza is under an Israeli so-called evacuation order, the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) said on Monday.

But there is no safe place for people to go, and no assurance of protection for civilians who choose to stay or are unable to evacuate from designated areas.

Repeated displacement is also making it increasingly difficult for organizations, already contending with Israel’s near-total blockade, to provide aid and services to those who were forced to leave their homes with next to nothing.

Palestinians return to eastern Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, after Israeli forces pulled out on 30 July (Omar Ashtawy APA images)

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said that it was no longer able to restore the functionality of the Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis after an Israeli evacuation order was issued on 27 July.

The Palestinian Civil Defense warned that overcrowding among displaced people in Gaza, who have insufficient access to water and sanitation, was leading to the proliferation of diseases, including conditions affecting children’s skin.

By early July, the World Health Organization had recorded nearly a million cases of acute respiratory infection, while other illnesses such as diarrhea, acute jaundice and cases of suspected mumps and meningitis, as well as scabies and lice, skin rashes and chicken pox are spreading among the population.

The UN health agency said on Tuesday that it was very likely that polio has infected Palestinians in Gaza after the health ministry in the territory declared a polio epidemic across the coastal enclave on Monday.

Detection of the virus in sewage samples collected in Gaza represents “a setback” against efforts to completely eradicate the disease worldwide, Christian Lindmeier, a World Health Organization official, said on Tuesday.

Al Mezan, a Palestinian human rights group based in Gaza, warned that more than one million children in the territory “are at risk of dying if not vaccinated” for the highly infectious virus.

“To prevent thousands of deaths, the international community must ensure Israel immediately ends its genocide, including the weaponization of water and sanitation facilities,” the rights group added.

According to WHO, the disease mainly affects children under the age of 5 and one in 200 infections “leads to irreversible paralysis.” Five to 10 percent of those paralyzed die “when their breathing muscles become immobilized.”

Collapse of essential systems

With the collapse of Gaza’s solid waste management system, conditions are ripe for the disastrous spread of diseases transmitted through contamination such as polio and hepatitis A – there have been 40,000 diagnosed cases of the latter since October.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has seen a drop in polio vaccination rates in Gaza from 99 percent to 89 percent, according to a UNICEF spokesperson. The director of the World Health Organization announced that it was sending more than a million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered to children “in the coming weeks,” UN News reported.

The virus, “transmitted by person-to-person spread mainly through the fecal-oral route,” according to WHO, is less frequently transmitted through contaminated water or food.

The “can emerge in areas where poor vaccination coverage allows the weakened form of the orally taken vaccine virus strain to mutate into a stronger version,” UN News added.

The vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 “had been identified at six locations in sewage samples collected last month from Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah – two Gaza cities left in ruins by nearly 10 months of intense Israeli bombardment.”

The spread of disease and epidemics is a predictable result of Israel’s genocidal military campaign, if not the intention.

In yet another case of Israeli soldiers destroying civilian infrastructure for no military purpose, soldiers recently recorded themselves detonating Canada well, the main water facility in Rafah, southern Gaza.

The Tel Aviv daily Haaretz reported on Monday that the facility “was destroyed last week with the approval of the commander of the soldiers … but without the approval of senior officers.”

But blaming lower-ranking soldiers may be an attempt to deter international courts scrutiny of more senior military personnel, while the pattern of behavior on the ground indicates that troops are ordered to destroy essential civilian infrastructure for no military purpose – a war crime.

Destroying water treatment plants is a war crime in its own right. Doing so in full knowledge that it will contribute to the spread of polio is evidence of genocidal intent. https://t.co/38PkBD4043

— Heidi Matthews (@Heidi__Matthews) July 27, 2024

Younis Tirawi, writing for Dropsite News, recounted that Giora Eiland, an adviser to Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant, described in October a strategy to destroy the ability of Palestinians in Gaza to pump and purify water within Gaza.

Monther Shoblak, the head of the water utility in Gaza, told Tirawi that the Canada well facility had remained functional until Israel’s ground invasion of Rafah in early May, as solar panels allowed it to operate despite Israel cutting off the supply of electricity to the territory in October.

Israel destroyed 30 water wells in the south this month alone, and displaced people have been forced to shelter in overcrowded conditions without suitable hygiene infrastructure or access to sufficient clean water, fuel, food and medicine.

The international charity Oxfam said earlier this month that “Israel damaged or destroyed five water and sanitation sites every three days since the start of this war,” reducing the amount of water available in Gaza by 94 percent to a mere 4.74 liters per person – “less than a single toilet flush.”

Israel attacks Beirut

Israel bombed southern Beirut on Tuesday, with its military claiming that it targeted Fuad Shukr, a senior Hizballah commander. Israel said that Shukr was killed but Arabic-language media said his fate remained unknown late Tuesday.

The area around Hizballah’s Shura Council in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of the Lebanese capital was also hit, that country’s state news agency reported.

Lebanon’s health ministry said that a woman and two children were killed, though “the search for more missing persons under the rubble continues.”

The apartment building in south Beirut has been decimated by what is said to be 3 missiles from an IDF drone. The strike that killed Hamas' deputy chairman Saleh al-Arouri in January left the building standing. This was meant to destroy it and take everybody with it. pic.twitter.com/OzSSD2ER3n

— Séamus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) July 30, 2024

The Beirut strike took down a whole residential building, and the scale of destruction may have been intended to reinforce the threats made by Israeli leaders to inflict the same genocidal violence in Lebanon that it has in Gaza.

+The strike in Beirut on Tuesday was an anticipated “retaliation” from Tel Aviv after a projectile killed 12 children at a sports field in Majdal Shams, a city in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights on Saturday. Israel blamed Hizballah but the Lebanese resistance group denied having any connection to the deadly blast.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, accused Hizballah of crossing a red line, though it is highly unlikely that the Lebanese resistance group would have deliberately targeted Majdal Shams.

A building targeted in an Israeli strike in the southern suburb of Beirut, 30 July (Bilal Jawich Xinhua News Agency)

Amal Saad, an expert on Hizballah, said that since 8 October, the group “has refrained from targeting Israeli civilians, much less Syrian Druze.”

“The strong support for the resistance movement among this community, which lives under Israeli occupation, makes it illogical for Hizballah to risk striking in this vicinity,” she added.

Targeting civilians, whether Syrian or Israeli, “wouldn’t be strategically beneficial for Hizballah when it would inevitably lead to all out war – a war which Hizballah has been very keen to avoid as demonstrated by its sub-threshold responses to Israeli strikes on Beirut and on civilians” in Lebanon, according to Saad.

She added the group has been careful to “avoid giving Israel any pretext for waging war” but “it’s entirely expected” that Israel would exploit the tragedy “in order to deflect attention away from its daily massacres of Palestinian children” in Gaza.

Not “a single drop of blood”

Majdal Shams residents chanted “murderer, murderer” at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he attempted to visit the site of the deadly strike on Monday.

After Netanyahu left Majdal Shams, local residents verbally attacked the head of the municipality, who invited Netanyahu to the town. People yelled at him "traitor, dog" and more. https://t.co/RIbUrWnZ7A

— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) July 29, 2024

Syrians reeling from the unprecedented mass casualty event in Majdal Shams issued a statement rejecting “that a single drop of blood be shed under the name of revenge for our children.”

After the deaths in Majdal Shams, Israeli media reported that Netanyahu canceled the exit of around 150 children from Gaza for medical treatment in the United Arab Emirates “for fear of public backlash,” the human rights group Gisha said.

In response to a petition from human rights groups, Israel’s high court on Sunday ordered the government “to inform it of its progress toward implementing a permanent mechanism for the medical evacuation of sick and injured Gazans,” The Times of Israel [reported]((https://www.timesofisrael.com/high-court-gives-government-7-days-to-come…).

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, announced that “85 sick and severely injured people,” including 35 children, were evacuated from Gaza to Abu Dhabi for specialized care on Tuesday.

“It is the largest medical evacuation since October 2023,” he said, adding that “63 family members and caregivers accompanied the patients.”

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said on Sunday that the ongoing closure of Gaza’s crossings, preventing “the travel of urgent and lifesaving cases,” makes clear “Israel’s commission of genocide against the people of the Gaza Strip.”

“Those who have not been killed by Israel’s war machine are not spared by the complete Israeli siege and closure on Gaza,” the rights group added, “leaving thousands of wounded and sick doomed to certain death.”

Death is all but guaranteed due to Israel’s “deliberate destruction and collapse of the healthcare system and the weakening of its remaining lifesaving resources,” according to PCHR.

Around 14,000 sick and injured patients, most of them children and older people, require care that is not available in Gaza.

PCHR estimates that hundreds of ill people have already died due to lack of access to medical treatment but there are “no statistics available in this regard due to disruptions in official medical monitoring and documentation systems.”

• Article first published in The Electronic Intifada

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Maureen Clare Murphy.

BBC coverage of the attack on a football pitch in the Golan Heights on Saturday has been intentionally misleading.

The BBC’s evening news entirely ignored the fact that those killed by the blast are a dozen Syrians, not Israeli citizens, and that for decades the surviving Syrian population in the Golan, most of them Druze, has been forced to live unwillingly under an Israeli military occupation.

I suppose mention of this context might complicate the story Israel and the BBC wish to tell – and risk reminding viewers that Israel is a belligerent state occupying not just Palestinian territory but Syrian territory too (not to mention nearby Lebanese territory).

It might suggest to audiences that these various permanent Israeli occupations have been contributing not only to large-scale human rights abuses but to regional tensions as well. That Israel’s acts of aggression against its neighbours might be the cause of “conflict”, rather than, as Israel and the BBC would have us believe, some kind of unusual, pre-emptive form of self-defence.

The BBC, of course, chose to uncritically air comments from a military spokesman for Israel, who blamed Hizbullah for the blast in the Golan.

Daniel Hagari tried to milk the incident for maximum propaganda value, arguing: “This attack shows the true face of Hizbullah, a terrorist organisation that targets and murders children playing soccer.”

Except, as the BBC failed to mention in its report, Israel infamously targeted and murdered four young children from the Bakr family playing football on a beach in Gaza in 2014.

Much more recently, video footage showed Israel striking yet more children playing football at a school in Gaza that was serving as a shelter for families whose homes were destroyed by earlier Israeli bombs.

Doubtless other strikes in Gaza over the past 10 months, so many of them targeting school-shelters, have killed Palestinian children playing football – especially as it is one of the very few ways they can take their mind off the horror all around.

So, should we – and the BBC – not conclude that all these attacks on children playing football make the Israeli military even more of a terrorist organisation than Hizbullah?

Note too the way the western media are so ready to accept unquestioningly Israel’s claim that Hizbullah was responsible for the blast – and dismiss Hizbullah’s denials.

Viewers are discouraged from exercising their memories. Any who do may recall that those same media outlets were only too willing to take on faith Israeli disinformation suggesting that Hamas had hit Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital back in October, even when all the evidence showed it was an Israeli air strike.

(Israel soon went on to destroy all Gaza’s hospitals, effectively eradicating the enclave’s health sector, on the pretext that medical facilities there served as Hamas bases – another patently preposterous claim the western media treated with wide-eyed credulity.)

The BBC next went to Jerusalem to hear from diplomatic editor Paul Adams. He intoned gravely: “This is precisely what we have been worrying about for the past 10 months – that something of this magnitude would occur on the northern border, that would turn what has been a simmering conflict for all of these months into an all-out war.”

So there you have it. Paul Adams and the BBC concede they haven’t been worrying for the past 10 months about the genocide unfolding under their very noses in Gaza, or its consequences.

A genocide of Palestinians, apparently, is not something of significant “magnitude”.

Only now, when Israel can exploit the deaths of Syrians forced to live under its military rule as a pretext to expand its “war”, are we supposed to sit up and take notice. Or so the BBC tells us.

Update:

Facebook instantly removed a post linking to this article – and for reasons that are entirely opaque to me (apart from the fact that it is critical of the BBC and Israel).

Facebook’s warning, threatening that my account may face “more account restrictions”, suggests that I was misleading followers by taking them to a “landing page that impersonates another website”. That is patent nonsense. The link took them to my Substack page.

As I have been warning for some time, social media platforms have been tightening the noose around the necks of independent journalists like me, making our work all but impossible to find. It is only a matter of time before we are disappeared completely.

Substack has been a lifeline, because it connects readers to my work directly – either through email or via Substack’s app – bypassing, at least for the moment, the grip of the social-media billionaires.

If you wish to keep reading my articles, and haven’t already, please sign up to my Substack page.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

COMMENTARY: By John Minto

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed so much hypocrisy in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the Western world that’s it’s hard to keep track.

Israel has racism down to a fine art.

While the world was putting their hand up for Ukrainian refugees — Israel put its hand up only for Jewish Ukrainian refugees (at least one grandparent must be Jewish).

• READ MORE: What the war in Ukraine taught us, Palestinians
• A threshold crossed: Israeli authorities and the crimes of apartheid and persecution

As early as January 2022, Israel began planning to transfer Ukrainian Jews to become colonists in the land of the Palestinians. Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption proclaimed: “We call on the Jews of Ukraine to immigrate to Israel – your home.”

The refugees/colonists began to arrive in early March, receiving preferential treatment, while Ukrainians who could not prove their Jewishness according to Israel’s racist criteria for refugees face myriad difficulties.

Meanwhile, the World Zionist Organisation’s Settlement Division has begun preparing 1000 housing units for Ukrainian Jews on stolen and occupied Palestinian and Syrian land in the occupied West Bank and the occupied Golan Heights.

When there was an outcry from Israeli liberals saying, quite rightly, that this was not a reflection of Jewish values, the government said they would take non-Jewish refugees as well.

Predictable reaction
The predictable reaction from racist Israelis was “We are a Jewish state — why are we taking in these gentiles?”

The government, however, says the non-Jewish refugees won’t be able to claim Israeli citizenship — they will have to leave when the fighting stops.

Important to point out here that Israel is NOT a Jewish state. Twenty percent of Israeli citizens are Palestinians. Israel is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural state dominated by a racist regime which has made indigenous Palestinians second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth class inhabitants in the land of their birth and the land of their ancestors, Palestine.

This is well described in Amnesty International’s short video on Israeli apartheid.

The Amnesty International video.

Jewish Ukrainian refugees are being welcomed because it helps Israel maintain a majority Jewish population. It’s a country obsessed with demographics and determined to maintain what Israel’s largest and most respected Human Right Group, B’Tselem, calls “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”.

It is proposed that most of the Jewish Ukrainian refuges will be settled in illegal Jewish-only settlements on stolen Palestinian land while Israel’s apartheid government continues its refusal to allow Palestinians to return to their homes and land after around 800,000 were ethnically cleansed from vast swathes of Historic Palestine by Israeli militias in 1948 — a process which continues to this day.

And Jewish Ukrainian refugees will qualify for automatic Israeli citizenship — something denied the big majority of Palestinians in their homeland Palestine – all of which has been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali — “I’ve killed a lot of Arabs in my time and there’s nothing wrong with that” — Bennett has been promoting himself as an international mediator.

International condemnation
Israel didn’t join the international condemnation of Russia and has repeatedly refused Ukrainian appeals for military assistance, but Bennet flew to Moscow for a three-hour meeting with Putin and was then on the phone to Zelensky suggesting to him he should think about the cost in death and destruction in Ukraine and agree to Russian terms.

Bennett followed up by trying to get the parties together for a mediation meeting in Jerusalem.

This is the same Israeli leader who refuses to meet with Palestinian leaders, refuses to negotiate any peace deal with Palestinians and says he will never agree to a Palestinian state being established on his watch. Not the credentials for an international mediator.

And in case readers missed the recent news a further two high-profile groups have joined the international human rights condemnation of Israel as an apartheid state.

A short summary of the highest profile groups that have described Israel in this way over the past 18 months is here:

• Numerous Palestinian civil society organisations
• The late South African Archbishop and Nobel Peace prize winner Desmond Tutu — “Name Israel an apartheid state and boycott”.
• B’Tselem — Israel’s largest and most respected human right organisation, in their January 2021 report “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid”
• Human Rights Watch, the US largest human rights organisation, in their April 2021 report “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution”
• Amnesty International, in their February 2022 report “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians”
• Addameer prisoner support group and Harvard Law School label Israel an apartheid state
• UN Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Human Right Council, Michael Lynk, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world

Racism on steroids
It’s racism on steroids in Israel just as it was in apartheid South Africa. And increasingly Jews around the world are seeing it as such. From an opinion poll last year 25 percent of American Jews already regard Israel as an apartheid state and 38 percent of young American Jews say the same thing.

We need regime change in Israel and everyone living in historic Palestine enjoying equal rights.

John Minto is a political activist and commentator, and spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished with the author’s permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

My Spotify workout playlist is a time warp. Growing up in a blue-collar neighborhood of New York City in the 1990s and early 2000s, listening to popular East Coast hip-hop was practically required. So on a recent morning in which I had planned to write a column about Israel/Palestine, I jammed out to the Jay-Z & Beyonce’s famous original power-couple-jam, “’03 Bonnie and Clyde.” The song revolves around a former street dude and his loyal girlfriend, ready to face off against the world like the title’s outlaw couple.

Ironically, this got me thinking about the U.S. and Israel, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu.

Because, if we’re honest with ourselves, the ditty could just as easily describe the still-fresh political romance of “B and D,” as well as the 70-year relationship between the U.S. and Israel.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has recently, and probably accurately from his perspective, called Donald Trump “the best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.” Netanyahu has proven himself all too willing to exchange political loyalty for gifts, and perhaps no one has offered him more than the 45th president of the United States. These include, but are not limited to:

moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the contested Golan Heights region (after which Bibi cutely named a Golan ghost town settlement for The Donald), and reversing 50-plus years of U.S. policy by declaring that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not in violation of international law. In light of these giveaways, the terms of the administration’s newest “peace” deal for the Holy Land should come as no surprise.

In characteristically bashful style, Trump has dubbed his Israel-Palestine plan the “Deal of the Century.” But even a cursory reading of the lengthy proposal, and an elementary understanding of the contested region’s history, reveal that it’s nothing more than a “raw deal” that effectively erases the Palestinian people. “Scam,” “Betrayal,” “Deceit,” or “Shame of the Century” would all be more accurate descriptions.

The U.S. has never been an “honest broker” in the Holy Land, having provided more more financial support to Israel since World War II than to any other nation. So it’s no surprise that it’s the Palestinians who stand to lose the most in this proposal: all semblance of a contiguous sovereign state, control of their own borders, an equal-status capital in East Jerusalem, any “right of return” for expelled refugees or restitution of lands stolen by Israeli settlers.

Trump, ever the corrupt real estate tycoon, seems to believe he can buy off Palestine’s unconditional surrender with a few modest subsidies for a rump statelet. It’s Extortion 101, and yet another example of Trump’s toxic negotiating style. Alliances are meaningless, and everything is transactional.

That the deal’s terms were negotiated by Jared Kushner, the president’s 39-year-old son-in-law and a billionaire with no expertise in diplomacy or the Arab world, makes it all the more cynical and insulting.

Trump’s plan has absolutely zero chance of bringing peace to a blood-soaked land, and given that this is the latest in a long line of increasingly bad deals from the “international community” (read: Israeli leaders and their American allies), it’d be hard to blame Palestinians for taking up arms. Why not rise in a third intifada? Tell me, what do they really have to lose if the only alternative is Trump’s take-it-or-leave-it threat? Even if armed Palestinian resistance has been historically counterproductive, violent reaction would be hard to dismiss. If I were a young, hopeless, underemployed Palestinian, I know I might respond to Trump’s plan by grabbing the nearest AK-47.

The most disturbing evidence that Trump and Netanyahu — and by extension the U.S. and Israeli governments — stand proudly against the world is this: The only other nations supporting this plan are dictatorial and/or monarchical Arab client states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. These regimes, some of which have gunned down peaceful protesters by the droves and still behead women for “sorcery,” also just happen to be huge recipients of U.S. military aid, arms sales, training, and “protection” from Iran. Pretty nice company to keep for a republic that bills itself as the world’s “beacon of democracy,” huh?

What should really be dubbed the “Long Con of the Century” is finally nothing more than an ex cathedra endorsement of apartheid from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, it appears that the most radical, chauvinistic Zionists have achieved their long-standing dream, perhaps indefinitely.

History shows that apartheid states, brutal in practice and often lasting decades, are doomed to fail. South Africa’s, which endured from 1948-1994, eventually collapsed under the weight of international sanctions, disapprobation and internal indigenous resistance. It may take another generation, but Israeli apartheid won’t last forever either; it too will crumble under the weight of its own contradictions. How can a country be both “Jewish” and “democratic” while some 50% or more of its population live as second-class citizens or under military occupation?

We must also ask the question, “Why now?”. Why introduce a plan at this particular moment?  Plenty of media outlets have asserted that the proposal’s unveiling is little more than an attempt by Trump and Netanyahu to distract the public from their impeachment and criminal trial, respectively. I only caution that we don’t put too much stock in this theory as it pertains to Trump: This president was anything but scared rolling out this “peace plan,” and the president himself is made of John Gotti-grade teflon. Witness his disturbingly effective performance at the State of the Union address in which he made House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Democrats more broadly look like petulant children.

That his speech was riddled with lies, half-truths and obfuscations doesn’t seem to matter. Trump’s “ride or die” base (there’s Jay and Bey again), and about half of Americans, could care less. Add to that the perhaps 50% (or more) of Democrats, anti-Trumpers and nonvoters who are either reflexively loyal to Israel or simply don’t care about foreign policy, and this farcical peace plan is unlikely to face much in the way of a public challenge. Like the explosive Afghanistan Papers, the “Deal of the Century” will fade fast from the headlines.

For even a modestly informed follower of Palestinian affairs, the announcement of this prejudicial, inhumane ultimatum rates as more than a little disturbing. Add to this the violence that U.S. has waged against Arabs across the region, to which I contributed as a former water carrier for the empire, and I’m embarrassed to be an American.

Fittingly, it was President Trump who neatly captured America’s view of the region in his State of the Union address. “Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life,” he said, in a nod to his Evangelical base. “And let us reaffirm a fundamental truth: All children — born and unborn — are made in the holy image of God.”

All children, that is, so long as they are not Palestinian.