Matt LaCroix is an author, researcher, and historian. His work focuses on ancient civilizations, ancient cultures, philosophy, quantum mechanics, and history.
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All posts for the day November 8th, 2023
A young girl receives treatment after an Israeli bombing on November 7, 2023 in the southern city of Khan Yunis, Gaza. Heavy fighting rages in the northern Gaza Strip as Israel encircles the area, despite increasingly pressing calls for a humanitarian truce. The leaders of the main UN agencies issued a rare joint statement to express their indignation. More than 40 per cent of the dead in Gaza after nearly four weeks of war are children.
(Photo by Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images)
The horrific atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 have opened the door to protracted horrific atrocities by Israel with key assistance from the United States.
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/palestinian-children-killed-gaza
The governments of Israel and the United States are now in disagreement over how many Palestinian civilians it’s okay to kill. Last week—as the death toll from massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza neared 10,000 people, including several thousand children—top U.S. officials began to worry about the rising horrified outcry at home and abroad. So, they went public with muted misgivings and calls for a “humanitarian pause.” But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear that he would have none of it.
Such minor tactical discord does little to chip away at the solid bedrock alliance between the two countries, which are most of the way through a 10-year deal that guarantees $38 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel. And now, as the carnage in Gaza continues, Washington is rushing to provide extra military assistance worth $14 billion.
Days ago, In These Times reported that the Biden administration is seeking congressional permission “to unilaterally blanket-approve the future sale of military equipment and weapons—like ballistic missiles and artillery ammunition—to Israel without notifying Congress.” And so, “the Israeli government would be able to purchase up to $3.5 billion in military articles and services in complete secrecy.”
Dressed up in an inexhaustible supply of euphemistic rhetoric and double-talk, such immoral policies are stunning to see in real time. And, for many people in Gaza, literally breathtaking.
While Israeli forces were using weapons provided by the United States to slaughter Palestinian civilians, resupply flights were landing in Israel courtesy of U.S. taxpayers. Air & Space Forces Magazine published a photo showing “U.S. Air Force Airmen and Israeli military members unload cargo from a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III on a ramp at Nevatim Base, Israel.”
Pictures taken on Oct. 24 show that the military cargo went from Travis Air Force Base in California to Ramstein Air Base in Germany to Israel. Overall, the magazine reported, “the Air Force’s airlift fleet has been steadily working to deliver essential munitions, armored vehicles, and aid to Israel.” And so, the apartheid country is receiving a huge boost to assist with the killing.
The horrific atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 have opened the door to protracted horrific atrocities by Israel with key assistance from the United States.
Oxfam America has issued a briefing paper decrying the Pentagon’s plans to ship tens of thousands of 155mm artillery shells to the Israeli military. The organization noted that “Israel’s use of this munition in past conflicts demonstrates that its use would be virtually assured to be indiscriminate, unlawful, and devastating to civilians in Gaza.” Oxfam added: “There are no known scenarios in which 155mm artillery shells could be used in Israel’s ground operation in Gaza in compliance with international humanitarian law.”
During the last several weeks, “international humanitarian law” has been a common phrase coming from President Biden while expressing support for Israel’s military actions. It’s an Orwellian absurdity as if saying the words is sufficient while constantly helping Israel to violate international humanitarian law in numerous ways.
“Israeli forces have used white phosphorus, a chemical that ignites when in contact with oxygen, causing horrific and severe burns, on densely populated neighborhoods,” Human Rights Watch senior legal adviser Clive Baldwin wrote in late October. “White phosphorus can burn down to the bone, and burns to 10 percent of the human body are often fatal.”
Baldwin added: “Israel has also engaged in the collective punishment of Gaza’s population through cutting off food, water, electricity, and fuel. This is a war crime, as is willfully blocking humanitarian relief from reaching civilians in need.”
At the end of last week, the Win Without War organization noted that “senior administration officials are increasingly alarmed by how the Israeli government is conducting its military operations in Gaza, as well as the reputational repercussions of the Biden administration’s support for a collective punishment strategy that clearly violates international law. Many worry that the U.S. will be blamed for the Israeli military’s indiscriminate attacks on civilians, particularly women and children.”
News reporting now tells us that Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken want a bit of a course correction. For them, the steady large-scale killing of Palestinian civilians became concerning when it became a PR problem.
Dressed up in an inexhaustible supply of euphemistic rhetoric and double-talk, such immoral policies are stunning to see in real time. And, for many people in Gaza, literally breathtaking.
Now, guided by political calculus, the White House is trying to persuade Israel’s prime minister to titrate the lethal doses of bombing Gaza. But as Netanyahu has made clear in recent days, Israel is going to do whatever it wants, despite pleas from its patron.
While, in effect, it largely functions in the Middle East as part of the U.S. war machine, Israel has its own agenda. Yet the two governments are locked into shared, long-term, overarching strategic interests in the Middle East that have absolutely no use for human rights except as rhetorical window-dressing. Biden made that clear last year when he fist-bumped the de facto ruler of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a dictatorship that—with major U.S. assistance—has led an eight-year war on Yemen costing nearly 400,000 lives.
The war machine needs constant oiling from news media. That requires ongoing maintenance of the doublethink assumption that when Israel terrorizes and kills people from the air, the Israeli Defense Force is fighting “terrorism” without engaging in it.
Another helpful notion in recent weeks has been the presumption that—while Hamas puts out “propaganda”—Israel does not. And so, on Nov. 2, the PBS NewsHour’s foreign affairs correspondent Nick Schifrin reported on what he called “Hamas propaganda videos.” Fair enough. Except that it would be virtually impossible for mainstream U.S. news media to also matter-of-factly refer to public output from the Israeli government as “propaganda.” (I asked Schifrin for comment, but my several emails and texts went unanswered.)
Whatever differences might surface from time to time, the United States and Israel remain enmeshed. To the power elite in Washington, the bilateral alliance is vastly more important than the lives of the Palestinian people. And it’s unlikely that the U.S. government will really confront Israel over its open-ended killing spree in Gaza.
Consider this: Just weeks before beginning her second stint as House speaker in January 2019, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was recorded on video at a forum sponsored by the Israeli-American Council as she declared: “I have said to people when they ask me—if this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it aid—our cooperation—with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are.”Even making allowances for bizarre hyperbole, Pelosi’s statement is revealing of the kind of mentality that continues to hold sway in official Washington. It won’t change without a huge grassroots movement that refuses to go away.
Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His new book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in June 2023 by The New Press.
In many ways, the modern American Administrative and Deep State, with its “public-private partnerships”, has come to resemble the 17th through 19th century British monarchy, with an entrenched bureaucracy (the permanent administrative state) functionally managed by a largely hereditary elite, surrounded by the concentric status rings of courtiers which comprise the Deep State (in the current embodiment).
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/malone-psywar-washington-dcs-bureaucracy
TUESDAY, NOV 07, 2023
Authored by Dr. Robert Malone via Substack,
Lack of market force corrections combined with PsyWar propaganda yields unstoppable parasitic growth…
My Dearest American Friends and Colleagues:
Just in case you didn’t notice, since the 1980s we have developed a very big problem which is growing exponentially. The US national debt has become unsustainable.
To a significant extent this debt is enabled by irresponsible printing and injection of fiat currency into the overall US economy by an unaccountable private “Federal Reserve” Bank. Today’s Federal Reserve routinely acts as a willing enabler rather than a check on administrative and deep state spending. The management of the Federal Reserve has become integrated into the interests and culture of the permanent bureaucracy. But that is merely one of many symptoms of a deeper problem.
Many factors drive this explosion of debt, but near the top of the causation list is that the executive branch and its permanent bureaucracy (administrative state + deep state) just does not care. They have no pressing reasons to care. They have developed a whole special economic logic to justify and rationalize not caring, called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
Functionally, unlike either industry (market forces) or the military (failed wars), there are no external forces currently limiting the expansion of the dysfunctional, counterproductive and (frankly) parasitic behavior of today’s Executive branch. Legislative branch oversight has been emasculated by consent with lobbyists collectively clamping down the Burdizzo, and in 1984 the Judicial branch conceded its authority to serve as a functional check on Executive/administrative branch arrogance via the Supreme Court Chevron Deference decision. And like the Federal Reserve, the informal “fourth estate” (corporate media), which historically provided a separate and semi-autonomous oversight function, has also been captured by this permanent bureaucracy.
The administrative and deep state has been so successful in capturing and manipulating media and related communication (largely via CIA, FBI, CISA and intelligence community infiltration) that they are able to seamlessly deploy advanced modern propaganda, PsyWar technologies and financial giveaways to control all narratives and information which might otherwise cause the majority of the electorate to check their actions, and in this way they completely avoid accountability. The CIA, FBI, CISA and intelligence community have become enablers of administrative and deep state excesses and overreach. With this corrupted information ecosystem, there cannot be any accountability of the administrative and deep state. In cooperation with a variety of corporate and NGO partners via “public-private partnerships”, the executive branch has completely captured and co-opted all oversight mechanisms which could enable or enforce checks and balances. The “ballot box” is well on its way to being a mere inconvenience, because for the majority of voters the synthetic false reality projected by captured media is the only political “reality” they encounter.
This is how modern nation-states abruptly collapse. As one recent example, recall the history of the USSR and most of the former communist Eastern European states. Modern nation-states fail by suffocating under the weight of bloated unaccountable bureaucracies whose primary objectives are to serve and sustain themselves rather than to promote and defend the general welfare and security of the citizenry. The social contract is stomped into dust by the boot of an uncontrollably arrogant, authoritarian, self-serving bureaucracy.
To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?
-John Marshall, Chief justice of the United States from 1801 to 1835
To illustrate my point with one example of the current situation, please consider the following from “Heard Around the Hill”. This is a publication of the Council on National Policy, which has provided a snapshot of the current state of the Federal Budget stalemate between the Legislative branch – constitutionally tasked with managing the federal budget and funding the government, and the Executive branch (and it’s permanent administrative bureaucracy) – tasked with administering that budget.
House Republicans passed a plan to address the nation’s debt ceiling Wednesday, tying the increase to desperately-needed spending limits and reforms.
The package includes:
- Limiting future spending to FY22 levels
- Reclaiming unspent COVID money
- Defunding 87,000 new IRS agents
- Implementing work requirements for government assistance programs
The White House refused to negotiate, insisting Congress give them a blank check for future spending and betting that proposed reforms could not garner enough votes in the House.
Even Democrats have been critical of Biden’s refusal to negotiate. Senator Manchin described the approach as a “deficiency of leadership.” House Members have also disapproved of the tactic.
“A Down Payment On Fiscal Sanity” is how economist and former Assistant Treasury Secretary Mike Faulkender detailed the Republican plan.
In discussing the current state of US Federal government, these terms “Administrative State” and “Deep State” are often tossed about as if they are one and the same, but that is most definitely not the case. As described by Kash Patel, the Deep State is a type of shadow governance made up of informal, extra-constitutional, secret and unauthorized networks of power operating independently of a nation state’s duly elected political leadership, acting in pursuit of agendas and goals which are separate from the interests of the citizenry.
Administrative State is a term used to describe the phenomenon of executive branch administrative agencies which exercise bureaucratic power to create, adjudicate, and enforce their own rules. The administrative state abuses congressional non-delegation, judicial deference, executive control of agencies, procedural rights, and agency dynamics to assert control over and above both republic and constitutional principles.
Another related term often used to describe the modern American bureaucratic state is “Leviathan”, a word with biblical origins repurposed as the title of Thomas Hobbes’ monarchist 1651 book which advocates a strong centralized government. Hobbes argues that civil peace and social unity can be best achieved through the establishment of a commonwealth via a social contract. Hobbes’ ideal commonwealth is ruled by a singular sovereign power responsible for protecting the security of the commonwealth, while being granted absolute authority to ensure the common defense.\
In many ways, the modern American Administrative and Deep State, with its “public-private partnerships”, has come to resemble the 17th through 19th century British monarchy, with an entrenched bureaucracy (the permanent administrative state) functionally managed by a largely hereditary elite, surrounded by the concentric status rings of courtiers which comprise the Deep State (in the current embodiment). Within the growing hereditary ruling American oligarchy there is some degree of turnover and palace intrigue, as the fortunes of some wane while others rise. As with the rise of the British bourgeoisie and mixing of gentry with financially successful upper middle castes, this often reflects broader financial and technological trends within the overall geo-political and geo-economic context in which a globalized oligarchy competes.
The obvious irony being that this type of system was precisely what the American Revolution was intended to overturn, and precisely what the US Constitution was written to prevent.
And above all of this, we have now added a transcendently powerful new capability to the Leviathan of old. The rise of the CIA and its “Mockingbird/Mighty Wurlitzer” infiltration of both media and academia, the FBI and its politically weaponized COINTELPRO-type surveillance, infiltration and disruption capabilities, the DoD and its PsyOps/PsyWar capabilities designed for offshore conflicts but turned against domestic citizenry to support executive branch-defined “crisis” management, and the explosive growth of a new censorship-industrial complex has yielded a “Leviathan” with reality-bending information control capabilities the likes of which the historic British monarchy could only dream of. Propaganda has come a long way from the days of Edward Bernays’ seminal 1928 book by the same name.
The Washington DC-based Administrative/Deep State has emerged as a separate entity unto itself, with its own culture, purpose, privileges and prerogatives. A key characteristic of this separate cultural phenomenon and mindset- often geographically referred to as the “inside the beltway” set (referring to the I 495 freeway loop encircling DC and environs)- is a focus on self-preservation and personal advancement, rather than on achieving a mission, producing a deliverable, or serving the needs of outside-the-beltway flyover state serfdom.
Imperial DC beltway denizens form an incestuous culture, much like any historic imperial court. Passive-aggressive “slow walking” of initiatives has been refined to a fine art. Sexual favors are routinely exchanged to seal short-term alliances, both within agencies and between contractors and “Govies”. Nuances of administrative regulations are weaponized to enable petty counterproductive one-upmanship. “Beltway Bandit” corporations, lobbyists (registered and unregistered) and “think tanks” cultivate, collect and support Deep State “swamp monsters” when the political wing they are allied with is out of power for a period, anticipating that these courtiers will be rotated back in with the next political shift or Executive branch “change” in leadership. And all are tied together in a revolving maypole dance. Together, they collectively weave a Uniparty in which the commonalities of shared commitment to advancing the interests of the Administrative/Deep State court are far more important and lasting than any inconvenient superficial narrative about serving the interests of the general electorate and citizenry. In this beltway culture, actually solving national problems takes a back bench to the pageantry and Machiavellian machinations of the elite courtiers and their allies.
No wonder the general populace often feels that their votes for elected Federal officials are irrelevant. Because they are, in fact, increasingly irrelevant. And as if that were not bad enough, the permanent administrative state considers elected and politically appointed officials to be “temporary employees”. The shadowy members of the unaccountable Senior Executive Service (SES) are the ones that actually administer the government.
But with the advance of PsyWar capabilities, bolstered by advances in modern psychology, and combined with algorithmic control, censorship, and manipulation of all information, Deep State beltway denizens have been able to achieve a propaganda capability which rivals the Atomic Bomb in its political implications.
These actors are now able to decouple their activities from objective truth. There can never be any accountability or consequences for mismanagement or misdeeds when they are able to effectively control all information and communication. Objective reality has become a theoretical post-modernist, surrealist construct, able to be contorted, moulded and enforced to comport with any synthetic version of reality which best supports Administrative State, SES and Deep State objectives. Corporate and social media lapdogs (rapidly becoming dominant via alliances with globalized investment funds), are bolstered and legitimized by coopted academia. Together they often act under the strong influence of Administrative State “intelligence” agencies and Deep State actors, and stand ever ready to create, control, propagate, and reinforce whatever narrative is needed.
Desire to achieve this sort of reality-bending groupthink or mass psychosis has been a common feature of bureaucracies, aristocracies, monarchies and oligarchies for as long as historical records have been kept. But what is different now is the power and penetration of modern digital algorithmic control mechanisms. We now witness creation of a lobotomized servant caste which enables an administrative bureaucracy nirvana of complete lack of accountability is now within reach. What could possibly go wrong?
I believe that a short answer is “paradigm shift”. This type of cognitive landscape, in which a synthetic reality is preserved and maintained despite increasing divergence from objective reality, is a setup for abrupt introduction of more adaptive alternatives. Examples of synthesized false realities include an unsustainable federal debt, a collapsing “safe and effective” COVID vaccine narrative, and the intrinsic contradictions of human activity-driven carbon dioxide levels representing a global existential crisis. Actively fabricated false realities create a situation where current governmental solutions drift further and further from optimal.
At some point, an abrupt disruption in perception, power, global finance or available technology will occur – a paradigm shift. And when a system, technical or political, has been prevented by externals from adapting to changing conditions (such as happens with propaganda), then a crisis can trigger catastrophic realignment of divergent synthetic and objective reality. In politics, these “earthquake” moments reflect abrupt resolution of shifting internal forces which have built up tension along a fault line, and often result in either revolutions or catastrophic failures of economies and civilizations.
Functionally, the US Government is now managed by disconnected Senior Executive Service (SES) “leadership”, acting in harmony with Administrative and Deep State castes, massive transnational financial institutions, public-private partnerships, corporate lobbyists and globalist non-governmental organizations such as the UN, WHO, WEF and Gates foundation. This supra-constitutional alignment has enabled permanent Administrative and Deep State “management” of an out-of-control federal budget which supports a grotesque obsession with their maypole dance, court drama, one-upmanship, and Machiavellian machinations. And all who object are censored, subjected to character assassination and labelled fringe outliers by captured media.
Rather than solving the missions and problems which plague the electorate that they currently parasitize, these erstwhile public servants have removed any ability of citizenry and electorate to provide the oversight, control and correction function originally designed into the US Constitution by those with lifelong experience in dealing with an earlier Leviathan. One that was also characterized by arbitrary and capricious administrative authoritarianism. And in the current embodiment we now have amazingly powerful psychological tools placed in the hands of venal, self-serving, immature and all too often sociopathic individuals seeking self-gratification.
Indeed, what can possibly go wrong?
Abrupt, catastrophic economic and/or military collapse, that’s what.
How many wars has the USA lost since WW II? And now this amazingly expensive and corrupt Ukrainian foreign adventure is deconstructing itself. Which (mis) adventure seems to have mostly worked to strengthen and hone Russian military might while depleting and fracturing NATO unity and capabilities. Biden sought to drain and exhaust Putin, thereby yielding Russian regime change. In an amazing feat of geopolitical jiu-jitsu, the precise opposite may well come to pass.
And then we have the obscenely bungled public health and financial responses to the COVID crisis. And growing awareness that the “climate crisis” has been synthesized and weaponized to advance a variety of geopolitical power, control and financial objectives.
This level of massive Administrative and Deep State mismanagement is not sustainable, even with US economic and natural resource muscle.
History and archaeology is littered with the bones of civilizations and bureaucracies which became inwardly focused and lost track of their function and purpose. I would love to believe in a fairy tale world in which modest modifications in administrative agency guidelines and practices could result in a more functional ruling bureaucracy. But I am too old for fairy tales, and have myself spent too many years in the bowels of the Federal administrative state.
I fear that the dysfunctional and fundamentally corrupt DC Beltway culture will not change until we have a massive paradigm shift of some sort or another. Resolving these structural problems will require a major correction. It could occur at the ballot box, but the power of the intelligence community/censorship-industrial complex to distort reality to protect itself may have already reached a stage where this cannot happen. However, the debt, the massive unsustainable debt, combined with the insatiable hunger of the Administrative and Deep State working cooperatively with the industrial masters of forever war and “biodefense” may soon trigger a global paradigm shift in power and finance.
And if that happens, I can only hope that I have enough guns, ammo, farm infrastructure and a well-developed network of like minded friends to ride out the following storm.
But in such a brave new world, getting diesel for trucks and tractors will definitely be a problem. Probably time to dust off my equine teamster skills and train some horses to pull.
At least 10,328 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in Israeli attacks since October 7.
Nov 8, 2023
Israeli forces have killed twice as many Palestinian children in Gaza over the past month than the total number of Palestinian children killed in the occupied West Bank and Gaza combined since 1967, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine.
Israel has unleashed another wave of attacks across the Gaza Strip as its war on the besieged enclave entered its second month.
In recent days, air raids have hit United Nations facilities where thousands of displaced people have been sheltering, as well as hospitals, which have been overwhelmed by wounded and running low on power and supplies.
An Israeli attack destroyed several homes early on Tuesday in the southern city of Khan Younis.
“We were sleeping, babies, children, elderly,” said one survivor, Ahmad al-Najjar, who is the general director at the Ministry of Education in Gaza.
At a school in Khan Younis, thousands of displaced were living in classrooms and the playground. One of them, Suhaila al-Najjar, said the last month had been filled with sleepless nights. “What’s to come? How will we live? Bakeries have closed, and there’s no gas. What will we eat?” she said.
In Deir el-Balah, rescue workers brought out at least four dead and a number of wounded children from the wreckage of a flattened building, witnesses said.
“My daughter,” screamed a woman as she ran behind them.
US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said earlier that the US had sent an Ohip-class submarine to the Middle East to ensure the safety of US forces in the Middle East
Nov 7, 2023
The US nuclear submarine Florida
NEW YORK, November 7. /TASS/. The US nuclear submarine Florida has entered the Persian Gulf in a show of force and as a deterrent to Iran, Bloomberg reported, citing US defense officials.
The submarine, although nuclear powered, doesn’t carry nuclear weapons, the report said. The Florida can carry as many as 154 Tomahawk missiles or as many as 66 Navy SEAL commandos.
US National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said on November 6 that the US had sent an Ohip-class submarine to the Middle East to ensure the safety of US forces in the Middle East. He didn’t say which submarine was deployed or where in the Middle East it was heading to.
Before that, the US Central Command said on X (formerly Twitter) that an Ohio-class submarine arrived in the command’s area of responsibility on November 5.
Pentagon Spokesman Pat Ryder said on October 31 that the US will be sending to the Central Command region 300 troops. He didn’t indicate exactly where they will be deployed, except for saying it will not be Israel.
Israel has never openly tested its nuclear weapons nor signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), making it the world’s only unacknowledged atomic power. The country has also never been subjected to an inspection from the UN nuclear watchdog.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/nuke-gaza-comment-israeli-minister-raises-eyebrows-moscow
TUESDAY, NOV 07, 2023
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Tuesday said that recent remarks by Israeli Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu, in which he said dropping a nuclear bomb in the Gaza Strip is “a possibility,” raised a multitude of questions.
“It raised a great number of questions. Question number one: Does this mean we are hearing an official statement acknowledging [Israel’s] possession of nuclear weapons? Accordingly, the next set of questions that everyone has is: Where are the international organizations, including the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]; where are the inspectors?” Zakharova said during a televised interview.
Estimates of Israel’s nuclear stockpile range between 80 and 400 warheads, which can be delivered via aircraft, submarine-launched cruise missiles, and the Jericho series of intermediate to intercontinental-range ballistic missiles.
Its first deliverable nuclear weapon is thought to have been completed in late 1966 or early 1967, making it the sixth country in the world to have developed them.
Israel has never openly tested its nuclear weapons nor signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), making it the world’s only unacknowledged atomic power. The country has also never been subjected to an inspection from the UN nuclear watchdog.
Asked in an interview with Radio Kol Berama last week whether an atomic bomb should be dropped on Gaza, Israeli minister Eliyahu answered: “This is one of the possibilities.”
Eliyahu, from the Jewish supremacist Religious Zionist party, stated further that “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza” and that, therefore, no humanitarian aid should be allowed into the besieged enclave.
He also expressed his support for depopulating Gaza and reconquering it to reestablish Jewish settlements there. Regarding the Palestinian population, he said: “They can go to Ireland or deserts; the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.” Eliyahu added that anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag “shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth.”
In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspended Eliyahu from participating in cabinet meetings and dismissed his statement, calling it “not based in reality.”
Russia’s UN envoy has previously stated that, as an occupying state, Israel has “no right” to self-defense.