Rep. Rand Paul: “We now have emails that show him saying that he knew it was gain of function, that the virus looked manipulated, and that he was worried that this came from the Wuhan lab. February 1st of 2020.”
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All posts for the day October 10th, 2023
TUESDAY, OCT 10, 2023
Paul Joseph Watson (PJW) aims his acerbic eye at the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas, focusing on the brutal attacks by Hamas militants on innocent civilians, including children and partygoers – individuals who had no connection to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.
“Hamas’s assault on Israel was characterized by a series of brutal attacks against innocent civilians, young people, and children just trying to live their lives.”
PJW then contrasts those scenes of horror with the shocking scenes of joy and celebration in major European cities and refugee camps in Greece following the attacks who were openly “gloating over terrorist attacks.”
“Supporters in London reveling in the carnage, the same in Birmingham, similar scenes in America, turning violent migrants at a refugee camp in Greece waiting to be dispersed throughout Europe celebrating the horror.”
PJW makes a particularly striking point, noting that, “if nothing else extinguishes the deadly myth of diversity being our strength will this?”
![](https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/2023-10-10_07-04-30.jpg?itok=jjf2Tt-d)
One can hardly be ashamed for having similar thoughts and raising doubts about the concept of multiculturalism when this is the behavior from large numbers of imported immigrants, as he challenges the idea that diversity inherently benefits society.
“Maybe diversity isn’t a strength. What I thought multiculturalism was about Turkish kebabs and chicken chow, you mean to tell me it’s more than that?”
PJW is careful to show the chaotic and reckless rhetoric from both sides of this
He criticizes prominent voices on the far left for defending the attacks and implies that they see mass migration to Western countries as a form of revenge against colonizers. It emphasizes the seriousness of these viewpoints and suggests that such perspectives could pose a threat to Western societies.
“Listen to them very carefully and take them deadly seriously because this is what they want to do to you and your family.”
The video then shifts its focus to Israel’s own controversial policies and actions against Palestinian civilians, highlighting that “every unspeakable horror that happened to innocent Israeli civilians is now happening to innocent Palestinian civilians.”
But, condemning the violence on all sides of the conflict, PJW criticizes conservative commentators who advocated for further military action, expressing concern about potential global repercussions.
“They’re all malevolent bastards, and Humanity really has hit rock bottom, hasn’t it when saying brutally slaughtering innocent civilians is evil, whoever does it becomes the rarest take in response to all this.“
Watson ends on an ominously depressing note, highlighting the apparent absence of any “good actors” in the conflict and the bleak state of humanity in the face of such violence.
Watch PJW’s full monologue below:
No one really cared when Israel bombed the coastal enclave every few years, killing many hundreds of Palestinian civilians each time. Israel simply called it “mowing the lawn”. The destruction of vast areas of Gaza, what Israeli generals boasted of as returning the enclave to the Stone Age, was formalised as a military strategy known as the “Dahiya doctrine“.
After so much indifference for so long, it is difficult to hear the sudden horror from Western governments and media because Palestinians have finally found a way – mirroring Israel’s inhumane, decades-long policy – to fight back effectively.
This moment rips off the mask and lays bare the undisguised racism that masquerades as moral concern in Western capitals.
https://www.sott.net/article/485008-The-Wests-hypocrisy-towards-Gazas-breakout-is-stomach-turning
Jonathan Cook
Middle East Eye
Sun, 08 Oct 2023
![](https://talesfromtheconspiratum.blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/image-17.png?w=520)
© Reuters
Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinian twin babies Ossayd and Mohammad Abu Hmaid, their family who were killed in Israeli strikes in the southern Gaza Strip
8 October, 2023
There will be little sympathy in the West as, yet again, besieged Palestinians are bombed by Israel, the immense suffering justified by the term ‘Israeli retaliation’…
The current outpouring of sympathy for Israel should make anyone with half a heart retch.
Not because it is not awful that Israeli civilians are dying and suffering in such large numbers. But because Palestinian civilians in Gaza have faced repeated rampages from Israel decade-after-decade, producing far more suffering, but have never elicited a fraction of the concern currently being expressed by Western politicians or publics.
The West’s hypocrisy over Palestinian fighters killing and wounding hundreds of Israelis and holding dozens more hostage in communities surrounding and inside besieged Gaza is stark indeed.
This is the first time Palestinians, caged in the coastal enclave, have managed to inflict a significant strike against Israel vaguely comparable to the savagery Palestinians in Gaza have faced repeatedly since they were entombed in a cage more than 15 years ago, when Israel began its blockade by land, sea and air in 2007.
Western media are calling the jailbreak and attack by Palestinians from Gaza “unprecedented” – and the most dismal intelligence failing by Israel since it was caught off-guard during the Yom Kippur War exactly 50 years ago.
Comment: The Israeli intel determination is questionable to say the least. Perception management via boldface lies is Israel’s trademark. And…the Mossad would never miss the lead-up to this war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Hamas, which nominally runs the open-air prison of Gaza, of starting “a cruel and evil war”. But the truth is that the Palestinians have “started” nothing. They have managed, after so much struggle, to find a way to hurt their tormentor.
Inevitably for the Palestinians, as Netanyahu also observed, “the price will be heavy” – especially for civilians. Israel will inflict on the prisoners the severest punishment for their impudence.
Watch how little sympathy and concern there will be from the West for the many Palestinian men, women and children who are killed once again by Israel. Their immense suffering will be obscured, and justified, by the term “Israeli retaliation”.
The real lessons
All the current analysis focusing on Israel’s intelligence “blunders” distracts from the real lesson of these rapidly evolving events.
No one really cared while Gaza’s Palestinians were subjected to a blockade imposed by Israel that denied them the essentials of life. The few dozen Israelis being held hostage by Hamas fighters pale in comparison with the two million Palestinians held hostage by Israel in an open-air prison for nearly two decades.
No one really cared when it emerged that Gaza’s Palestinians had been put on a “starvation diet” by Israel – only limited food was allowed in, calculated to keep the population barely fed.
No one really cared when Israel bombed the coastal enclave every few years, killing many hundreds of Palestinian civilians each time. Israel simply called it “mowing the lawn”. The destruction of vast areas of Gaza, what Israeli generals boasted of as returning the enclave to the Stone Age, was formalised as a military strategy known as the “Dahiya doctrine“.
No one really cared when Israeli snipers targeted nurses, youngsters and people in wheelchairs who came out to protest against their imprisonment by Israel. Many thousands were left as amputees after those snipers received orders to shoot the protesters indiscriminately in the legs or ankles.
Western concern at the deaths of Israeli civilians at the hands of Palestinian fighters is hard to stomach. Have not many hundreds of Palestinian children died over the past 15 years in Israel’s repeated bombing campaigns on Gaza? Did their lives not count as much as Israeli lives – and if not, why not?
After so much indifference for so long, it is difficult to hear the sudden horror from Western governments and media because Palestinians have finally found a way – mirroring Israel’s inhumane, decades-long policy – to fight back effectively.
This moment rips off the mask and lays bare the undisguised racism that masquerades as moral concern in Western capitals.
Hypocrisy distilled
Distilling that hypocrisy is Volodymr Zelenskiy, Ukraine‘s president. At the weekend, he issued a lengthy tweet condemning Palestinians as “terrorists” and offering Israel his unwavering support.
He averred that:
“Israel’s right to self-defense is unquestionable. The world must stand united and in solidarity so that terror does not attempt to break or subjugate life anywhere and at any moment.”
The inversion of reality is breathtaking. The Palestinians cannot “subjugate life” in Israel. They have no such power, even if a few briefly managed to break out of their cage. It is Israel that has been subjugating Palestinian life for decades.
Not all forms of “terrorism”, it seems, are equal in the eyes of Zelenskiy, or his patrons in western capitals. Certainly, not the state terrorism of Israel that has made Palestinian lives a misery for decades.
How does Israel have an “unquestionable right” to “defend itself” from the Palestinians whose territory it occupies and controls? How does Russia then not have an equal claim to be “defending itself” when it hits Ukrainian cities in “retaliation” for Ukrainian strikes intended to liberate its territory from Russian occupation?
Israel, the much stronger, belligerent party, is now laying waste to Gaza “in retaliation”, as the BBC puts it, for the latest Palestinian attack.
So on what grounds will Zelenskiy or his officials be able to condemn Moscow when it fires missiles “in retaliation” for Ukraine’s strikes on Russian territory? How, if Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation of Gaza is terrorism, as Zelenskiy asserts, is Ukrainian resistance to Russian occupation not equally terrorism?
No hiding place
By indulging Israel in its deceptions, Israel’s allies have allowed it to perpetrate ever more outrageous lies. At the weekend, Netanyahu warned Palestinians in Gaza to “leave now” because Israeli forces were preparing to “act with all force”.
But Netanyahu knows, as do his Western enablers, that Gaza’s population has nowhere to flee. There is no hiding place. Palestinians have been sealed into Gaza since Israel besieged it by land, sea and air.
The only Palestinians able to “leave Gaza” are the armed factions who broke out of their Israeli-imposed jail and are being denounced as “terrorists” by Western politicians and media.
Western governments so horrified by the Palestinian attack on Israel are also the governments that are remaining silent as Israel turns off the electricity to the prison that is Gaza – again in supposed “retaliation”.
The collective punishment of two million Palestinians in Gaza, dependent on Israel for power because Israel surrounds and controls every aspect of their lives in the enclave, is a war crime.
Strangely, western officials understand it is a war crime when Russia bombs power stations in Ukraine, turning off the lights. They scream for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be dragged to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. So why is it so difficult for them to understand the parallels of what Israel is doing to Gaza?
Daring escape
There are two immediate, and contrasting, lessons to be learnt from what has happened this weekend.
The first is that the human spirit cannot be caged indefinitely. Palestinians in Gaza have been constantly devising new ways to break free from their chains.
They have built a network of tunnels, most of which Israel has located and destroyed. They have fired rockets that are invariably shot down by ever more sophisticated interception systems. They have protested en masse at the heavily fortified fences, topped by gun towers, Israel surrounded them with – only to be shot by snipers.
Now they have staged a daring escape. Israel will batter the enclave back into submission with massive bombardments, but only “in retaliation”, of course. The Palestinians’ craving for freedom and dignity will not be diminished. Another form of resistance, doubtless more brutal still, will emerge.
And the parties most responsible for that brutality will be Israel and the West which supports it so slavishly, because Israel refuses to stop brutalising the Palestinians it forces to live under its rule.
![](https://talesfromtheconspiratum.blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/image-16.png?w=519)
© Reuters
Palestinians take shelter at schools affiliated with the United Nations due to Israeli bombardments
Gaza City, Gaza • October 08, 2023
The second lesson is that Israel, endlessly indulged by its Western patrons, still has no incentive to internalise the fundamental truth above. The rhetoric of its current government of fascists and Jewish supremacists may be particularly ugly, but there is a broad consensus among Israelis of all political stripes that the Palestinians must continue to be oppressed.
Which is why the so-called opposition will not hesitate to support the military pounding of the long-besieged enclave of Gaza, killing yet more Palestinian civilians to “teach them a lesson”, a lesson no one in Israel can articulate beyond asserting that Palestinians must accept their permanent inferiority and imprisonment.
Already, the “good Israelis” – opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz – are in discussions with Netanyahu to join him in an “emergency unity government”.
What “emergency”? The emergency of Palestinians demanding the right not to live as prisoners in their own homeland.
Israelis and Westerners can continue their mental gymnastics to justify the Palestinians’ oppression and refuse them any right to resist. But their hypocrisy and self-deceptions stand exposed for the rest of the world to see.
About the Author:
Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at http://www.jonathan-cook.net
Comment: Perhaps Netanyahu was returned to office precisely to set up and execute this operation with Hamas as his tool.
Documents confirm the activities of key Pentagon contractors in several countries on the continent, the Russian Defense Ministry has alleged
https://www.rt.com/africa/584528-moscow-alleges-washington-illegal-biological-operations-africa/
Oct 10, 2023
![Washington moving ‘illegal’ bioresearch operations to Africa – Moscow](https://mf.b37mrtl.ru/files/2023.10/xxs/652515e920302710686ae3f3.jpg)
© Getty Images / SrdjanPav
The US is transferring dual-purpose biological research activities to Africa, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Monday, citing Pentagon documents.
According to Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who leads the Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops of the Russian Armed Forces, the move is in response to Moscow’s efforts to expose Washington’s illegal military-biological operations. He also cited the worsening “epidemic situation near biosites in the European region.”
“The documents at our disposal confirm the activities of key Pentagon contractors on the African continent – in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Uganda, and South Africa. Customers on the part of the US government are the DTRA [Defense Threat Reduction Agency], the National Security Agency, and the US Department of State,” Kirillov added.
Moscow has repeatedly accused the US of plotting biological warfare against it and other countries.
Last year, Russian UN representative Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council that Moscow had discovered at least 30 Ukrainian laboratories engaged in disease research, including anthrax and cholera, funded and supervised by the US. In May, State Duma Deputy Speaker Irina Yarovaya expressed concern over Washington’s interest in biological weapons, describing it as a highly concealed and unpredictable form of mass destruction that could become a global issue.
The US has denied the claims.
On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry reiterated its previous concerns about “unauthorized” sample collection by Metabiota, which it referred to as a “key Pentagon contractor” during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
According to the chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops, the company’s lack of transparency, which prompted concerns from the World Health Organization, resulted in the illegal export of live Ebola virus samples to the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infections.
READ MORE: US seeks to base its nuclear forces in UK – media
“Predictable deterioration of the disease situation near American biosites is forcing the governments of many African states to take another look at the necessity and expediency of co-operation with the United States. For example, in 2022, Metabiota operations in Africa were terminated because the company’s illegal practices raised too many questions at the level of national governments,” Kirillov claimed.
The San Francisco-based Metabiota was a partner in the $200 million USAID-funded ‘Predict’ epidemiological research project, which concluded in 2019.
Several reports, including one by the Associated Press in 2016, claimed that during the 2014 Ebola outbreak the company made a series of “costly” mistakes in its efforts to combat the disease in Sierra Leone.
Metabiota employees contributed to flawed laboratory results, disrupted collaborations, and put people at risk of the deadly virus, according to the outlet, which cited leaked documents and interviews with international health responders.
There’s a reason why the same people who uphold the absurd transgender agenda also back Kiev
https://www.rt.com/news/584098-transgender-ukraine-liberals-war/
![Woke and war-crazed: Why Western liberals support Ukraine’s atrocities](https://mf.b37mrtl.ru/files/2023.10/xxs/651ecb6185f5404ab276edb2.jpg)
Ukraine’s territorial defense force spokesperson, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, in an interview in Kiev, Ukraine, September 7, 2023 © Roman PILIPEY / AFP
Voltaire famously stated, “whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” It is helpful to see the following full quote in which this line appears, to understand the meaning of this oft-cited maxim:
“Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If the God‐given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.”
In other words, being compelled to believe untruths, and indeed obvious untruths which you know in your heart are untrue, and then living your life as if these untruths are true, can have a morally corrosive effect and prime you to conform with terrible crimes.
George Orwell illustrates this phenomenon well in his novel ‘1984’, in which he explains that the dictatorial and brutal government at the center of this story rules the population and gains its buy-in to the awful system in which it lives by forcing the people to believe in and even repeat absurd, nonsensical slogans such as “war is peace” and “freedom is slavery.”
Today, one of the real-life versions of these types of absurdities that large swaths of the population are being forced into believing is that our biological sex does not matter; that whether we have XX or XY chromosomes (or the incredibly rare variation between the two, which is often referred to as being ‘intersex’) is irrelevant to whether we are actually women or men. The most extreme version of this cult-like belief system is that people are merely ‘assigned’ one of the two sexes at birth by doctors and midwives – of course based on obviously visible sex characteristics – but that this designation is ultimately random and subject to change at any time by any individual, including young children whose brains have not fully developed, who may decide they are the opposite gender, or something in between the male-female binary, or even something else entirely.
Many even advocate – and indeed some jurisdictions are passing laws requiring – that birth certificates not include the sex of a newborn baby because we simply cannot know what that is until the individual decides his or her gender at a later stage. And, when this individual makes this decision, it is everyone’s obligation to accept this for every and all purposes, lest one be accused of bigotry.
The chief Orwellian slogan of this belief system is the mantra: ‘transwomen are women’, which means that biological males are women for any and all purposes if they identify as such, which has resulted in women becoming a mere subset of their own sex category. A shorthand for this, then, is that ‘men are women’, at least when they claim to be.
Under this new ideology, men can freely enter into womanhood, and women’s spaces and sports, based simply on how they identify. What’s more, it is not only that ‘transwomen are women’, but that transwomen are somehow superior to biological women who identify as women, the latter being given the additional qualifier of ‘cis women’ whether they accept this moniker or not.
That is, this ideology goes well beyond advocating that trans-identifying people be treated with dignity, respect and fairness – something which I fully agree with – and instead upends the basics of what up until very recently we all believed about the nature of our biology and indeed our very selves.
Taken as one hundred percent true, this mantra leads to absurd and even atrocious results, such as biological male sex offenders being housed in women’s prisons and women’s domestic violence centers, making women vulnerable to abuse and even rape. And if women speak up about such atrocities, they may be labelled ‘bigots’ and ‘transphobes’ and therefore deserving of maltreatment, including beatings and threats of rape and murder.
Here we see the belief in absurdities leading to the commission and defense of atrocities. But this process, as predicted by Voltaire and Orwell, does not end here. Rather, it continues into other realms. Thus, with people primed to accept one set of absurdities and atrocities, it is now easier to make them go along with other absurdities and atrocities.
For example, it is now easier to convince people to go along with what at one time would have been unthinkable – e.g., overlooking or even supporting neo-Nazis in Ukraine, applauding a former Waffen SS soldier in the liberal Canadian House of Commons, and even going casually along with a war which could lead to nuclear annihilation.
I do not think it is a coincidence that Western liberals, who historically have been more critical of and oppositional to war than conservatives, but who are more accepting of the new ‘transwomen are women’ slogan, are much more apt than conservatives to approve of support of the Ukrainian military, even if that means supporting literal Nazis.
It is my own observation that there is a very strong correlation between people being critical of gender ideology (whether those people are on the left or on the right) and also being critical of Western support for Ukraine. And often, the two subjects come up quickly in the same conversation, showing that there is more than a tangential connection between these seemingly disconnected issues.
And this brings us to Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, the American identifying as a transwoman who had previously worked as a journalist and combat medic, and until recently served as an official English-language spokesperson of the Ukrainian military.
Some found the choice by the Ukrainian military of Ashton-Cirillo as a spokesperson a bit confounding, given the Ukrainian regime’s less-than-stellar treatment of the LGBTQ community in Ukraine.
However, from the point of view of trying to garner and maintain support in the West – at least among liberals – for NATO’s war effort in Ukraine, this choice makes sense. In the minds of Westerners who accept the prevailing gender ideology, Ashton-Cirillo’s advocacy for Ukraine gives instant legitimacy to Ukraine, even when Ashton-Cirillo advocates for horrendous policies.
One example of this is when Ashton-Cirillo was recently suspended by the Ukrainian military for stating that “Russia’s war criminal propagandists” – that is, journalists who have a different view on the war than the Western establishment press – will be “hunted down.”
Publications such as Advocate – a liberal, LGBTQ advocacy magazine – expressed concern that Republican US Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio had sent a letter to the Biden administration complaining about Ashton-Cirillo’s statements, writing, “I worry American resources could be supporting violence or the threat of violence against people for speaking their mind.” Advocate pointed out Vance’s “history of being anti-LGBTQ+,” but said nothing about the fact that Ashton-Cirillo was advocating for actual war crimes.
Ashton-Cirillo has said other concerning things, such as “Russians are not European… Russians are Asian. Ultimately, they do come from the Mongols, they come from a grouping of people who want to be slaves.” In this and other statements, Ashton-Cirillo repeats the tropes of the Nazis about Russians which they used, and continue to use, to justify mistreating and even killing them. But again, the fact that this casual racism comes from an individual identifying as a transwoman helps this bad medicine go down easier with vast sectors of the West.
Of course, for writing this piece, and stating what I believe to be obvious truths, but truths which we are aggressively urged to deny, I will be attacked and vilified. Possibly, I will be called a ‘fascist’ or even a ‘Nazi’ for questioning the prevailing gender orthodoxy, including by people who themselves have been led into supporting their government in aiding literal Nazis in Ukraine. But it is my belief that we must always tell the truth, no matter how much it hurts. It is only in doing so that we preserve our moral compass and indeed our very soul and that we are able to resist the atrocities we are being led to accept.
The collective punishment of two million Palestinians in Gaza, dependent on Israel for power because Israel surrounds and controls every aspect of their lives in the enclave, is a war crime.
This is the first time Palestinians, caged in the coastal enclave, have managed to inflict a significant strike against Israel vaguely comparable to the savagery Palestinians in Gaza have faced repeatedly since they were entombed in a cage more than 15 years ago, when Israel began its blockade by land, sea, and air in 2007.
The current outpouring of sympathy for Israel should make anyone with half a heart retch.
Not because it is not awful that Israeli civilians are dying and suffering in such large numbers. But because Palestinian civilians in Gaza have faced repeated rampages from Israel decade after decade, producing far more suffering, but have never elicited a fraction of the concern currently being expressed by Western politicians or the public.
The West’s hypocrisy over Palestinian fighters killing and wounding hundreds of Israelis and holding dozens more hostage in communities surrounding and inside besieged Gaza is stark indeed.
This is the first time Palestinians, caged in the coastal enclave, have managed to inflict a significant strike against Israel vaguely comparable to the savagery Palestinians in Gaza have faced repeatedly since they were entombed in a cage more than 15 years ago, when Israel began its blockade by land, sea, and air in 2007.
Western media are calling the jailbreak and attack by Palestinians from Gaza “unprecedented”—and the most dismal intelligence failing by Israel since it was caught off-guard during the Yom Kippur War exactly 50 years ago.
Have not many hundreds of Palestinian children died over the past 15 years in Israel’s repeated bombing campaigns on Gaza? Did their lives not count as much as Israeli lives – and if not, why not? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Hamas, which nominally runs the open-air prison of Gaza, of starting “a cruel and evil war.” But the truth is that the Palestinians have “started” nothing. They have managed, after so much struggle, to find a way to hurt their tormentor.
Inevitably for the Palestinians, as Netanyahu also observed, “the price will be heavy” – especially for civilians. Israel will inflict on the prisoners the severest punishment for their impudence.
Watch how little sympathy and concern there will be from the West for the many Palestinian men, women, and children who are killed once again by Israel. Their immense suffering will be obscured, and justified, by the term “Israeli retaliation.”
The real lessons
All the current analysis focusing on Israel’s intelligence “blunders” distracts from the real lesson of these rapidly evolving No one really cared while Gaza’s Palestinians were subjected to a blockade imposed by Israel that denied them the essentials of life. The few dozen Israelis being held hostage by Hamas fighters pale in comparison with the two million Palestinians held hostage by Israel in an open-air prison for nearly two decades.
No one really cared when it emerged that Gaza’s Palestinians had been put on a “starvation diet” by Israel – only limited food was allowed in, calculated to keep the population barely fed.
No one really cared when Israel bombed the coastal enclave every few years, killing many hundreds of Palestinian civilians each time. Israel simply called it “mowing the lawn”. The destruction of vast areas of Gaza, what Israeli generals boasted of as returning the enclave to the Stone Age, was formalized as a military strategy known as the “Dahiya doctrine“.
No one really cared when Israeli snipers targeted nurses, youngsters, and people in wheelchairs who came out to protest against their imprisonment by Israel. Many thousands were left as amputees after those snipers received orders to shoot the protesters indiscriminately in the legs or ankles.
Western concern at the deaths of Israeli civilians at the hands of Palestinian fighters is hard to stomach. Have not many hundreds of Palestinian children died over the past 15 years in Israel’s repeated bombing campaigns on Gaza? Did their lives not count as much as Israeli lives – and if not, why not?
After so much indifference for so long, it is difficult to hear the sudden horror from Western governments and media because Palestinians have finally found a way – mirroring Israel’s inhumane, decades-long policy – to fight back effectively.
This moment rips off the mask and lays bare the undisguised racism that masquerades as moral concern in Western capitals.
Hypocrisy distilled
Distilling that hypocrisy is Volodymr Zelenskiy, Ukraine‘s president. At the weekend, he issued a lengthy tweet condemning Palestinians as “terrorists” and offering Israel his unwavering support.
He averred that “Israel’s right to self-defense is unquestionable”, adding: “The world must stand united and in solidarity so that terror does not attempt to break or subjugate life anywhere and at any moment.”
Not all forms of ‘terrorism’, it seems, are equal in the eyes of Zelenskiy, or his patrons in western capitals. Certainly, not the state terrorism of Israel that has made Palestinian lives a misery for decades
The inversion of reality is breathtaking. The Palestinians cannot “subjugate life” in Israel. They have no such power, even if a few briefly managed to break out of their cage. It is Israel that has been subjugating Palestinian life for decades.
Not all forms of “terrorism,” it seems, are equal in the eyes of Zelenskiy, or his patrons in Western capitals. Certainly, it is not the state terrorism of Israel that has made Palestinian lives a misery for decades.
How does Israel have an “unquestionable right” to “defend itself” from the Palestinians whose territory it occupies and controls? How does Russia then not have an equal claim to be “defending itself” when it hits Ukrainian cities in “retaliation” for Ukrainian strikes intended to liberate its territory from Russian occupation?
Israel, the much stronger, belligerent party, is now laying waste to Gaza “in retaliation,” as the BBC puts it, for the latest Palestinian attack.
So on what grounds will Zelenskiy or his officials be able to condemn Moscow when it fires missiles “in retaliation” for Ukraine’s strikes on Russian territory? How, if Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation of Gaza is terrorism, as Zelenskiy asserts, is Ukrainian resistance to Russian occupation not equally terrorism?
No hiding place
By indulging Israel in its deceptions, Israel’s allies have allowed it to perpetrate ever more outrageous lies. At the weekend, Netanyahu warned Palestinians in Gaza to “leave now” because Israeli forces were preparing to “act with all force”.
But Netanyahu knows, as do his Western enablers, that Gaza’s population has nowhere to flee. There is no hiding place. Palestinians have been sealed into Gaza since Israel besieged it by land, sea, and air.
The only Palestinians able to “leave Gaza” are the armed factions who broke out of their Israeli-imposed jail and are being denounced as “terrorists” by Western politicians and media.
Western governments so horrified by the Palestinian attack on Israel are also the governments that are remaining silent as Israel turns off the electricity to the prison that is Gaza—again in supposed “retaliation.”
The collective punishment of two million Palestinians in Gaza, dependent on Israel for power because Israel surrounds and controls every aspect of their lives in the enclave, is a war crime.
Strangely, western officials understand it is a war crime when Russia bombs power stations in Ukraine, turning off the lights. They scream for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be dragged to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. So why is it so difficult for them to understand the parallels of what Israel is doing to Gaza?
Daring escape
There are two immediate, and contrasting, lessons to be learned from what has happened this weekend.
The first is that the human spirit cannot be caged indefinitely. Palestinians in Gaza have been constantly devising new ways to break free from their chains.
The parties most responsible for that brutality will be Israel and the West which supports it so slavishly, because Israel refuses to stop brutalizing the Palestinians it forces to live under its rule.
They have built a network of tunnels, most of which Israel has located and destroyed. They have fired rockets that are invariably shot down by ever more sophisticated interception systems. They have protested en masse at the heavily fortified fences, topped by gun towers, Israel surrounded them with—only to be shot by snipers.
Now they have staged a daring escape. Israel will batter the enclave back into submission with massive bombardments, but only “in retaliation,” of course. The Palestinians’ craving for freedom and dignity will not be diminished. Another form of resistance, doubtless more brutal still, will emerge.
And the parties most responsible for that brutality will be Israel and the West which supports it so slavishly, because Israel refuses to stop brutalizing the Palestinians it forces to live under its rule.
The second lesson is that Israel, endlessly indulged by its Western patrons, still has no incentive to internalize the fundamental truth above. The rhetoric of its current government of fascists and Jewish supremacists may be particularly ugly, but there is a broad consensus among Israelis of all political stripes that the Palestinians must continue to be oppressed.
This is why the so-called opposition will not hesitate to support the military pounding of the long-besieged enclave of Gaza, killing yet more Palestinian civilians to “teach them a lesson,” a lesson no one in Israel can articulate beyond asserting that Palestinians must accept their permanent inferiority and imprisonment.
Already, the “good Israelis” – opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz – are in discussions with Netanyahu to join him in an “emergency unity government”.
What “emergency”? The emergency of Palestinians demanding the right not to live as prisoners in their own homeland.
Israelis and Westerners can continue their mental gymnastics to justify the Palestinians’ oppression and refuse them any right to resist. But their hypocrisy and self-deceptions stand exposed for the rest of the world to see.
© 2023 Middle East Eye
Jonathan Cook won the 2011 Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include: “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (2008). His website is http://www.jonathan-cook.net.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has Hamas, which nominally runs the open-air prison of Gaza, of starting “a cruel and evil war.” But the truth is that the Palestinians have “started” nothing. They have managed, after so much struggle, to find a way to hurt their tormentor. No one really cared while Gaza’s Palestinians were subjected to a blockade imposed by Israel that denied them the essentials of life. The few dozen Israelis being by Hamas fighters pale in comparison with the two million Palestinians held hostage by Israel in an open-air prison for nearly two decades.