From October 7, 2023 to October, 2024 – and the Aftermath
From October 7, 2023 to October, 2024 – and the Aftermath
Hari Kumar 12 October; minor modifications 13 October
Preface
On the October 7th 2023 Hamas led an attempted break-out of the world’s largest open-air concentration camp of Gaza. That break-out was characterized by individual terror. Hamas termed it Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
We have made our views about the tactics of individual terror previously clearly (November 6th, 2023 at MLRG.online). However this attempted break-out was hardly surprising given the intensity of oppression, harsh conditions and inability to freely organise. That state of affairs was in essence quite ensured by the massive force of the Israeli forces.
Moreover despite considerable knowledge about events inside Gaza, the human rights violations of Israel were sanctioned by international governments. In the forefront of support to these violations were the USA, UK, Germany and the other member nations of the European Community (EU). Such unequivocal support continued on to the current massive war crimes of Israel underwritten by Western imperialism. It is now been maintained as Israel escalated to the present attacks upon Lebanon, and to the increasing likelihood of military steps against Iran.
A simple description of what Israel did in Gaza summarises the genocidal attack on the Palestinians in Gaza following October 7th 2023:
“More than 40,000 people have been killed according to Gaza’s health ministry. It recently published a list naming more than 30,000 of the dead. The list is 649 pages long. The first 13 pages are all babies under one. It is not until page 215 that you see the name of an adult.”
“One Year of Israel’s War on Gaza: What wasn’t on US TV “News”;
Al Jazeera English 10/08/2024
Data from the UN Estimates that there are 40 million tonnes of rubble to be cleared to end September 2024; (Data cited at Adam Tooze podcast; “A Year to the War in Gaza“; at minute 26.00 minute)
Moreover even within a short time, by 7 October 2024– there have been already likely a thousand deaths and 1 million people displaced in Lebanon. (Data from Adam Tooze podcast; Ibid at minute 17.00 podcast)
In our prior paper of November 6th, 2023 we sought to summarise a vast literature on the attack upon Palestine by the Israeli government in alliance with the USA and other Western imperialists. This article follows the expanding conflagration in the Middle East since October 7 2023. However it attempts a more focused approach, seeking to situate Israel’s murderous rampage within the overall strategy of USA and Western imperialism in the Middle East. It asks why and how did this series of events happen? Of necessity the article attempts to confront a hypothesis that comes increasingly to the fore.
Namely was the October 7th attack of Hamas not a surprise – as has been largely painted by the diplomats and media of the West? Was it ‘allowed’ to unroll as it would then enable the obliteration of Gazan and West Bank Palestinian people; and enable re-drawing the map of the Middle East? Is this scenario articulated to a more global reality of shoring up USA imperialism?
To imagine that the events from October 7 2023 to now were either un-expected or unplanned, is in our view simply naive. There are three considerations in our view.
First, at the very least a break-out from Gaza was long expected. No one could expect otherwise as it was deliberately fueled by repetitive humiliations and an increasing deprivation placed upon the Palestinian people.
Secondly – we should add to this that the Israeli government has long been expert in provoking, and using a response to justify its own amplified terror. Listen to Moshe Dayan 1967 Israeli war-hero and Defence Minister, President of Israel Yitsak Raban (1922-1995) and General Shlomo Gazit, former Commander of Military Intelligence. Moshe Dayan:
“On April 27th, 1997 Yediot Aharonot published a 1976 interview with Moshe Dayan. Dayan, who was the defense minister in 1967, explains there what led, then, to the decision to attack Syria. At the time of the Six Day War of June 1967, Syria was portrayed as a serious threat to the security of Israel, and a constant initiator of aggression towards the population of northern Israel. But according to Dayan, neither before 1967, not after that date did Syria constitute
a threat to Israel.
“Just drop it”, he says, “I know how at least 80% of all the incidents with Syria started. We were sending a tractor to the demilitarized zone and we knew that the Syrians will shoot. If they did not shoot, we would instruct the tractor to go deeper, till the Syrians finally got upset and start shooting. Then we employed artillery, and later also the air-force… I did that… and Itzhak Rabin did that, when he was there (as commander of the Northern front, in the early sixties).” Judith Palmer Harik; “Hizbullah – the Changing Face of Terrorism’; London 2004; p. 165.
President of Israel Yitzak Rabin (1922-1995), saw the Hizbullah as reacting to Israeli aggression:
”In 1992, Hizbullah sent shells into Israeli village in the Galilee panhandle… In November of that year, Rabin conceded that Hizbullah had not fired on them without provocation from the Israeli army. The rocket attacks, he noted, had never been directed at Israeli population centers ‘as targets in themselves’. Instead he said they were launched in response to Israeli operations against Hizbullah in South Lebanon. The reporter called this a “startling departure form the Israeli line”;
Judith Palmer Harik; “Hizbullah – the Changing Face of Terrorism’; London 2004; p. 165.
Israeli General Shlomo Gazit, former Commander of Military Intelligence agreed:
”During the period that led up to the 1992 flare-up, Israel not Hizbullah ,had broken the tacit rules of engagement established between the forces. He noted that these rules only permitted the targeting of military objectives within the ‘Security Zone’. We need to say it again and again” the general observed. “Hizbullah did observe the ‘rules of the game’ for a long period. They refrained from shelling Israeli territory and from infiltration. They limited their operations to the ‘Security Zone’. It was our retaliation for their skilful strikes at our soldiers inside the zone that made them escalate the fighting. We first bombed and shelled many targets in Lebanon, including some far to the North. Only then did Hizbullah retaliate by shelling some Israeli locations – with no causalities”.
Cited Harik JP Ibid p. 167.
Finally and thirdly, we should add to this the long standing plans of the USA and its vassal state of Israel, to change the map of the Middle East.
At the minimum, undoubtedly the events of October 7th 2023, were capitalised upon. They have justified both the re-drawing of the map of the Middle East and attempt to obliterate any prospect of Palestinian nationhood. But even labelling it as a simple ‘capitalisation’ is very likely a naïve understatement.
The question is whether this chain of events was foreplanned? Was a prior knowledge of an impending Hamas attack simply allowed to unfold, in order to justify the subsequent savagery unleashed by Israel? At the moment this remains a hypothesis, but obtaining a clear proof in the form of documentation, will take some 50 years at minimum before the archives are open.
Nonetheless without being conclusive, enough facts are available even now, which strongly suggest this Machiavellian scenario. Below we will consider this hypothesis by a three part examination of currently available data.
1) We first briefly examine how did the Middle East arrive at October 7, 2023?
2) It is followed by a review of how the Hamas planned their attack and what level of Israeli government knew about these.
3) Because this is now at a rapidly evolving stage we will end in an necessarily incomplete projection of the imperialist war plans now.
Part One: How did the Middle East get to October 7, 2023?
1. Background: Establishing the state of Israel
The major step in setting the stage for today’s disastrous events, was the imperialist device of constructing the Zionist ‘dream’. This placed a state of Israel into the geographical middle of the evolving nascent nations of the Middle East. This was a Western imperialist coup. However it was critically aided by the hidden revisionists of the USSR with the leadership of Andrei Gromyko at the UN. As W.B. Bland for the Communist League has described, the capture of leading positions in the USSR by hidden revisionists – paved the way for this significant victory of Western imperialism. Under J.V. Stalin’s leadership the Jewish territory of Birobidzhan ( In ‘Marx, Lenin and Stalin on Zionism’; Alliance ML 1998) was established within the USSR as an autonomous national region. Stalin’s correct policy of national development for Jews in the then socialist USSR was subverted into the bastardised “nation” of Israel as an imperialist pawn. From the start the state of Israel was envisaged to be a comprador state of the West.
2. Numerous attempts by the USA to control or limit any independence of the Middle East surrounding Israel
In this short work the detailed policies cannot be laid out. We will here only point out the major nodal points after 1953.
2 i) Pre-collapse of the revisionist USSR up to 1992
In broad brush strokes there were first attempts to limit Middle Eastern States adhering to the revisionist USSR. After the death of Stalin, the Khruschev line of an accommodation with USA imperialism became predominant (See “The Conflict within the Soviet Neo-Capitalist Class”contained in “The Class Basis Of Sakharov’s “Liberalism”; Compass “February 1976, No.3; Bland for Communist League)
After the inner party struggle that removed Khruschev form power, his successors notably led by Bulganin, discarded this approach. These new revisionists of the USSR government fostered their own neo-colonial policy, including in the Middle East. Various national bourgeoisie were identified to whom ‘aid’ was given to build up both social, political and military hegemony. These included such pivotal countries as Egypt (“The War In The Middle East”; Bland WB in “Class against Class”, October 1973).
“By the summer of 1970 it had become clear to the most influential section of the United States imperialists that it would be essential for the USA to import large quantities of oil in the next few years from the Arab states in the Middle East…
From this time on the US imperialists made their position clear to the Arab Middle East governments. They would endeavour to persuade the Israeli government to withdraw “voluntarily” to the boundaries existing before the war of 1967. And if those attempts failed, they would hold back (without discontinuing entirely) their military “aid” to Israel.. provided:
1) the Palestine national liberation movements were effectively liquidated; and
2) the representatives of Soviet imperialism were expelled from the Arab states… In 1970 and 1971 the US government pressed its “peace plan” through visits to, the Middle East by Secretary of State William Rogers, Assistant Secretary of State: Joseph Sisco, and diplomats Donald Bergus and Michael Sterner.”
Bland WB “The War In The Middle East”; Ibid October 1973
The Egyptian state quickly conformed:
“Since the death of Nasser, two conflicting trends have emerged within the Egyptian capitalist class – each standing for a different method of trying to solve the problem of the continuing occupation of Egyptian territory by the troops of their U,S. dominated neighbour, Israel.
One section, headed by former Vice-President Ali Sabry, favoured the adoption of a phoney programme of “socialism” as a pretext for completely subordinating Egypt to Soviet neo-imperialism in an alliance which would force Israel to retreat from her present positions.
The other section, headed by President Anwar Sadat himself, favoured confederating Egypt with Syria and Lybia, in order to offer to subordinate this confederation, to US imperialism in return for US pressure, on her Israeli puppets to withdraw their forces.
The US imperialists having indicated their interest in this second line of approach, the President dismissed Ali Sabry on the eve of the visit to Egypt by US Secretary of State William Rogers, at the beginning of May 1971.
Soon afterwards several hundred prominent persons associated with the pro-Soviet faction within the capitalist class – including Ali Sabry; the Secretary-General of the ruling “Arab Socialist Union”, Abdul Nur; six Cabinet Ministers, including the Minister of Defence, General Mohammed Fawzy, and the Minister of the Interior, Sharawy Gornaa – were arrested in the name of “preserving the independence of Egypt from a coup engineered by a foreign power”.
Apprehensive for the safety of their massive economic and military investments (more than half of Soviet “aid” has gone to Egypt), the Soviet neo-imperialists immediately despatched a high-level though “unofficial” delegation to Cairo headed by President Podgorny. The Egyptian government was pleased to sign a15-year “Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation” with the Soviet Union, and to use it as blackmail to further persuade the US imperialists to pressure their Israeli puppets into a peace settlement acceptable to the Egyptian capitalist class.”
(Bland for ‘Red Front’ MLOB, July-August 1971; p.20; cited at “Class against Class”, Ibid, October 1973)
In 1973 the Syrian government made similar steps and imposed “severe restrictions” on ‘Soviet’ personnel in Syria.
By the 1970’s it was ever clearer to the USA that Israel was its major “strategic asset”:
“Israel, U.S. policymakers believed, could serve as a “strategic asset” and a surrogate for U.S. interests. … “the strategic asset thesis came to be accepted … as absolute dogma in the conventional wisdom of American political culture.” This thesis formed the basis of the 1969 peace plan developed by Secretary of State William P. Rogers and the shuttle diplomacy of National Security Advisor (and later Secretary of State) Henry Kissinger after the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War that led to the Sinai I and Sinai II disengagement agreements between Egypt and Israel.”
Deborah J. Gerner & Ian S. Wilbur;; “Case 257 Semantics or Substance?
Showdown Between the United States and the Palestine Liberation Organization”; Institute for the Study of Diplomacy Georgetown University, 2000.
During the imperialist aggression of the USSR into Afghanistan, its power was steadily waning (“The Afghanistan War Of 2002 – Legacy Of USA Imperialism And Social-Imperialism“; Alliance ML; 2002 ). The balance of forces abruptly changed after the final fall of the USSR and its formal dissolution (“Liquidation of the USSR” Bland for Communist League February 1992).
Naturally with its competitor out of the way, the architect planners of the USA took bolder steps. Broadly the goal was to ensure control of the Middle Eastern oil reserves.
2ii) After the elimination of its chief rival the USA moves to the Gulf Wars
Simply put, the USA has wanted to redraw the Middle East map, which largely date from the First World War imperialist designs. That original post World War map was especially convenient for British imperialism, as it entered a long wane.
The full catalogue and details of USA machinations while instigating the numerous wars in the Middle East is beyond the current scope. (However more details are provided at these given references: “Setting up of Iraq” Compass 1990 ; The Invasion Of Kuwait; Compass August 1990.; “Imperialism Launches its’ War” February 1991 ; “The Gulf War” Alliance ML 1992).
Suffice it to say that the invasion of Iraq to remove then President Saddam Hussein, in 2003 was considered as a step to solidifying USA hegemony in the Middle East.
A short summary of these years up to the early 2000s, directly links up with Israeli thinking – as follows:
“Since 2001, the Middle East has suffered several full-scale wars, including: The Iraq wars, a still occurring disintegration of the Syrian state, the Saudi led war in Yemen, continued oppression of the Palestinians by Israeli fascism. Through many of them, there has raged an Islamic Fundamentalism.
The underlying central theme of all these upheavals in the Middle East is the new USA strategic goal. This is to re-draw the boundaries and maps of the Middle East, which had been set after the First World War. Skeptics argue that this was unplanned, and has evolved. But data confirms a conscious plan.
The Rogers Plan indicates that the USA has in fact been thinking along these lines for some time. Moreover, the USA built on what was known as the Oden Yinon Plan or the plan for a “Greater Israel” articulated in 1982:
“The first argument for partitioning Iraq was made in 1982 by Zionist strategist Oded Yinon, whose plan – often called the Yinon plan or the plan for “Greater Israel” – calls for dividing Iraq into separate statelets for Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. It similarly calls for the division of other secular Arab states, like Syria, into smaller states divided along ethnic or sectarian lines that are constantly at war with each other in order to ensure that Israel “becomes an imperial regional power.”
“Kurdistan – A Marxist-Leninist Framework Part Two”; ML Currents Today; Point 156; October 2019; citing Whitney Webb, ‘Regime Change, Partition, and “Sunnistan”: John Bolton’s Vision for a New Middle East’; March 30th, 2018; MintPress News
The USA long dominant in the world pecking order had a long-standing ambition aimed at no less, than a so-called “New Middle East”.
3. The Oslo Plan
In the interim imperialism had also forced the Oslo Plan onto the remnants of an evolving Palestinian nation. This was in two instalments, Oslo I being in 1993 and Oslo II in 1995. They were aided by a now subservient and effective PLO, which we amongst others, characterised as follows:
“The 1993 signing of the Oslo Declaration “on the White House lawn” marked a precipitous descent into opportunist agreements with both the imperialist power of the USA and with the Israeli state.”
“On Palestine, the Palestine Liberation Movement, and USA Imperialism: A Marxist-Leninist View” Point no.38; November 6, 2023; MLRG.online
The division of the land mass of Palestine into 3 sectors – the bulk in Zionist Israel; and two ghettoized smaller Palestinian sectors – the West Bank and the Gaza strip, was the latest stage on which progressive encroachments of the Palestinians would continue.
The two geographically disconnected Palestinian ghettoes were placed under progressively greater attack. Overt encouragement of the Israeli government spurred the Zionist colonial settlers on the West Bank to destroy villages and kill their inhabitants, burn crops, uproot hundreds-year old olive orchards etc. It is difficult to say whether such a fearful state of precarity in the West Bank was ‘better’ than the one faced by the Palestinians in Gaza. However Gaza was known to be the largest concentration camp in the world. One of the most densely populated areas of the world, Gaza was approximately 2 million people packed into a state 25 miles by 6 miles (141 square miles). It was sealed off by Egypt and Israel, including its sea access from 2006.
Yet somehow – despite that – an evolving nascent bourgeoisie in Palestine continued to carve out a possible capital basis. This was particularly so in the West Bank. No clear evolution of this grouping into a party of the national bourgeoise took place. But instead the capitalists were supported and rooted in the Gulf capital markets (MLRG.online).
The economy of the Gazan siege territory, was dominated by smuggling and a so-called ‘tunnel economy’. To a large extent this was controlled by Hamas. Hamas had been facilitated into the government of Gaza by Israeli assistance. Until October 7th, 2024 – Hamas was actively supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
4. The State of Lebanon and Hizbullah (aka Hezbollah)
Lebanon’s multi-ethnic modern state owes its complexity to a history stemming from Ottoman Empire, to its later colonial status to the French. This left a large comprador faction – largely Christian in denomination. The path towards the current divisions within the State of Lebanon can be traced from its occupying powers:
“From the 16th century, Lebanon formed part of the Ottoman Empire until the First World War. In 1918 Allied forces seized Lebanon and in 1923 it was made, like the adjoining state of Syria, a French mandate.
During the Second World War, when the French authorities in Lebanon declared in favour of Vichy, British troops occupied the country. In November 1941 the French Committee of National Liberation declared Lebanon to be an independent state, and the Republic of Lebanon was proclaimed in January 1944. After the war, however, the French government delayed removing its troops, which finally departed only in December 1946.”
“Lebanon” Notes by W.B. Bland, circa 1987; at Alliance ML.
The Christian denominated compradors formed as their political and military representatives – the Phalange. Initially funded as pro-French, they then became funded as pro-USA. The USA ensured they took power at key points:
“In January 1957 US President Dwight Eisenhower proclaimed a new American policy, known as the “Eisenhower Doctrine”. This provided for US military aid and the use of US troops to “protect” Middle Eastern states threatened with “aggression”.
By the late 1950s popular dissatisfaction in Lebanon with the corrupt regime of President Camille Chamoun and its policy of subservience to United States imperialism had been reinforced by dissatisfaction with the whole state system, particularly since (although no new census was taken) the Moslem communities now formed a majority of the population.
In May 1958 this dissatisfaction broke out into a mass insurrection against the regime. When, in July, the armed forces of the state proved unable to suppress this and a national-democratic revolution in neighbouring Iraq had toppled the feudal pro-imperialist regime of King Feisal, Chamoun appealed to the United States for military intervention, and 14,000 US troops were landed in Lebanon (British troops being simultaneously landed in Jordan).
Under American pressure, the domination of the state by the Christian comprador capitalist groups was saved by securing the replacement of Chamoun as President in September 1958 by the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Fuad Chehab, who appointed a new government giving Ministerial posts to leaders of the opposition. The American forces withdrew from the country in October.”
“Lebanon” Notes by W.B. Bland, circa 1987; at Alliance ML.
After Israel was established, Lebanon’s comprador class naturally followed a pro-Israel path. This reached a particular low with the Israeli support to commit the massacre of Palestinians at the Shabra and Shattila camps in 2006, as discussed below.
In contrast, was the inevitable moves towards a ‘national’ consciousness, as opposed to a comprador state. The Hizbullah organization emerged after the 1982 Civil War of Lebanon. It was formed from smaller militia of a Shi’ia background. Killed by Israel on 27 September 2014, the late Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah of the Hizbullah, had explicitly stated Hizbullah was a national independence movement in Lebanon:
“Now, our priority – as Lebanon, homeland, people, government resistance, and army – is to emerge from this battle victorious with our heads high. Being forces that have zeal for Lebanon, its dignity, and pride, I faithfully say that this is Lebanon’s true battle of independence. If we win this battle, this means that we, the Lebanese people, will tell the whole world that we will be the decision-makers. We will even be able to tell the embassies that are interfering in our internal affairs not to interfere in our internal affairs. This is a battle of true independence.”
Interview with Hizbullah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah; July 22, 2006 All-Jazeera interviews Hizbullah chief; Interview by Al-Jazeera Beirut Bureau Chief Ghassan Bin-Jiddu”; cited “Who Does Hizbullah Represent In Class Terms?”“Alliance” Marxist-Leninist; 2006
It has attempted for most of its history to steer a non-sectarian and ‘pluralist’ path:
”There is no doubt that Hizballah is a nationalist party. Its view of nationalism differs from that of many Lebanese, especially from the Phoenician-origins nationalism espoused by the Maronite Christian right, and from the neo-liberal, US-backed nationalism of Hariri’s party. Hizballah offers a nationalism that views Lebanon as an Arab state that cannot distance itself from causes like the Palestine question. Its political ideology maintains an Islamic outlook. The 1985 Open Letter notes the party’s desire to establish an Islamic state, but only through the will of the people. “We don’t want Islam to reign in Lebanon by force,” the letter reads. The party’s decision to participate in elections in 1992 underscored its commitment to working through the existing structure of the Lebanese state, and also shifted the party’s focus from a pan-Islamic resistance to Israel toward internal Lebanese politics. Furthermore, since 1992, Hizballah leaders have frequently acknowledged the contingencies of Lebanon’s multi-confessional society and the importance of sectarian coexistence and pluralism within the country. It should also be noted that many of Hizballah’s constituents do not want to live in an Islamic state; rather, they want the party to represent their interests within a pluralist Lebanon. “
Lara Deeb; Deeb L; “Hizballah: A Primer”; July 31, 2006; cited Alliance ML 2006
5. Previous Israeli Attempts to erase the Lebanese state
Up to 2023 there were largely Israeli individual assassinations of militia leaders and forays by Israel into Lebanon. But it should not be forgotten that there were three prior frank Israeli invasions of Lebanon. This followed the injunctions of David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973, and viewed as the primary founder of the State of Israel and first prime minister 1955-1963), who wrote in his diary in 1948:
“The Lebanese government should be overthrown.. a Christian state South to be up there, with its Southern frontier on the Litani”.
Gilmour, David: “Dispossessed”; London; 1983; p. 220; cited in “Brutal Israeli and USA Attack Lebanon – The Long Laid Imperialist Plans Come To Fruition”; 2006 Alliance ML.
This logic has seen – previous to the current 2024 Israeli invasion – three Israeli invasions of Lebanon. First in 1978 came “Operation Litani”:
“In March 1978, with the aim of destroying the Palestinian bases in south Lebanon, Israeli forces invaded the country and occupied its southern part up to the river Litani.
The Security Council of the United Nations called upon Israel to withdraw its forces, and set up a United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to confirm the withdrawal and restore the authority of the Lebanese government in the south. The Israeli forces withdrew back to the frontier in June, but left a Lebanese puppet force, later known as the South Lebanon Army, in occupation of the border area. In April 1979 the leader of this force, Major Sa’ad Haddad, proclaimed the zone an “independent Lebanese state”.
“Lebanon” Notes by W.B. Bland, circa 1987; at Alliance ML.
Then secondly, in 1982 was launched the so-called “Operation Peace for Galilee” which in turn led to the Sabra and Shattila massacres:
“In June 1982 an attempt was made on the life of the Israeli Ambassador in London. On this pretext Israel invaded Lebanon again in an operation called “Operation Peace in Galilee”. This had the aim of destroying completely the Palestine liberation forces in Lebanon (they had, as has been said, been driven from Jordan in 1970-71).
Although Syria had been informed prior to invasion that the operation was not directed at its forces, some conflict with Syrian forces did occur. On the sixth day of the invasion, by which time its armed forces had lost 650 killed and 500 armoured vehicles, Syria signed a cease-fire with Israel.
By this time the invasion forces were 60 miles into Lebanon, laying siege to the Moslem area of West Beirut (where the remains of the PLO forces were bottled up). In August the Palestine Liberation Organisation agreed to withdraw its forces from Lebanon under the supervision of a Multi-national Peace-keeping Force from Britain, France, Italy and the United States. The evacuation was completed by the end of the month, and 11,000 of the PLO’s fighters were dispersed to other Arab states.
In September the new President-elect of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated at unknown hands. The Israeli forces then permitted Phalangists to enter two Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in West Beirut and massacre more than 800 women, old people and children.”
“Lebanon” Notes by W.B. Bland, circa 1987; at Alliance ML.
Then in 2006 came another third, brutal invasion, with again an Israeli inspired war that the imperialists enabled. (“Brutal Israeli And USA Attack Lebanon – The Long Laid Imperialist Plans Come To Fruition“; Alliance ML 2006). It had been preceded by the murder of Lebanese politician Rafiq Hariri which served to stir discontent and separate Syrian influence from Lebanon (“Reactionary terror continues in Lebanon “; Garbis Altinoglu; Alliance 2005 ).
Forced to withdraw by high casualties and a very vocal anti-war protest movement in Israel, the government accepted in the Knesset that mistakes had been made, but rejected calls for an enquiry (Wikipedia accessed 10 October, 2024).
Nonetheless, the long range goal had not been lost sight of was casually revealed in an interview by 2006 Secretary of State, Condolezza Rice:
“What we’re seeing here [in regards to the destruction of Lebanon amidst Israeli attacks on Lebanon], in a sense, is the growing – the ‘birth pangs’ – of a ‘New Middle East’ and whatever we do, we [United States] have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the New Middle East [and] not going back to the old one.”
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Special Briefing on the Travel to the Middle East and Europe of Secretary Condoleezza Rice (Press Conference, U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C., July 21, 2006). Mahdi Nazemroaya, “Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a “New Middle East”; Global Research; cited in “Kurdistan – A Marxist-Leninist Framework Part Two”; ML Currents Today; Point 156; October 2019
At that time the plan involved also carving out a divided Iraq (between Sunni and Sh’ia) and a new state of Kurdistan to be ruled by USA compradors. It had to be modified by resistance of Iraqi Shi’ia and by the Turkish state. The Rice Plan – just as the earlier Rogers Plan – was simply put on hold to await new events.
The state of Israel had been placed in position since its formation – by all USA administrations to date, as its ‘armed fist’ in the Middle East. The USA awaited events while arming Israel to the hilt. The mid-term goals were to continue the erosion of any Palestinian identity and as far as the more Zionist sections were concerned – to effect the grounds for a longer term goal. That was the complete destruction of the remarkably still resisting, and still evolving – Palestinian identity. This attempt was to be made in 2024, after ensuring the surrounding Arab states would remain silent as extraordinary and illegal and certainly inhumane – warfare was unleashed on the Palestinians.
6. Breaking the increasing diplomatic isolation of Israel – and Netanyahu’s new map
As part of the on-going plans for magic-ing away inconvenient political entities, the USA and Israel worked on the encircling Arab states. Israel working with the USA and its other main Middle Eastern client state of Saudi Arabia, eroded resistance to overt political relationships with Israel:
“From 2017-2021, Israel rode high under the friendly Trump administration and became a stabilizing partner with Gulf Arab states like Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia – all at the expense of Qatar, the chief state sponsor of Hamas.”
Daniel Byman, Riley McCabe, Alexander Palmer, Catrina Doxsee, Mackenzie Holtz, and Delaney Duff; “Hamas’s October 7 Attack: Visualizing the Data”; CSIS Center for Strategic & International Studies”; December 19, 2023. Accessed 10 October, 2024
This cosiness only deepened under the Joe Biden US Presidency. The larger geopolitical situation beyond the Middle East was evident from an early stage. In an interview with Franklin Foer who interviewed himself many policy makers in the White House:
“Q: Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, (sat – Ed) with these Saudi diplomats working out a grand bargain: In exchange for a Palestinian state, Saudi Arabia would normalize diplomatic relations with Israel…
A: We have to begin beyond the Middle East. The United States is contesting large chunks of the world with China, and there was a sense within the administration that Saudi Arabia was about to slip into China’s sphere. So even though the Biden administration came into power really prepared to be hostile to the Saudi government, to its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, for the killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, they also wanted to make sure that the major producer of fossil fuels in the world, this country that sits in a strategic place that has all these resources, didn’t slip into the wrong sphere.”
Ezra Klein in interview with Franklin Foer, “How Biden’s Middle East Policy Fell Apart”; NYT; Oct. 8, 2024
However Mohammed bin Salem (or MBS as he is fondly called in Washington DC) noted a problem lay in the matter of Palestine. Nonetheless, “normalisation” of relations with Israel looked promising and “close” to bin Salem:
“Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince has said “every day we get closer” to normalising ties with Israel. A deal between the two powers would mark a huge regional shift. But in a rare interview with Fox News, Mohammed bin Salman stressed the Palestinian issue was still a “very important” part of US-brokered talks. As part of the negotiation process, the Wall Street Journal said Israeli and US officials were working on a plan that could see Riyadh openly enrich uranium… Mr Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden met on the side-lines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
They also spoke positively about the chances of a breakthrough that would see Israel and Saudi Arabia establishing diplomatic relations for the first time. The US is a close ally of both countries.
An Israeli official statement said the meeting in New York “mostly dealt with ways to establish an historic peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which could greatly advance an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict”.
Israel’s Foreign Minister, Eli Cohen, later said that a framework deal could be in place by early next year. “The gaps can be bridged,” Mr Cohen told Israel’s Army Radio. “It will take time. But there is progress.”
Yolande Knell; “Saudi Arabia getting closer to Israel normalisation deal, prince says”; BBC 21 September 2023; Accessed 10 October, 2024.
On September 22, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was ready to unveil the plan. He addressed the UN General Assembly, about a new Middle East”. He brzenly displayed a map at the United Nations General Assembly of the “new Middle East”. It showed his intent – the obliteration of Palestine as a geographical entity:
“Netanyahu held up two maps at the UN during his speech. The first was intended to represent the geography of 1948, showing how Israel was alone in the Middle East and had no allies. Israel was highlighted in green for effect. The second map, which portrayed the year 2023 had seven countries in Green, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. It was meant to illustrate how Israel now had friends in the region and how a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia would expand that.”
Tovah Lazaroff; “Netanyahu under fire for using Greater Land of Israel map at UN”; Jersualem Post; September 22, 2023 (accessed 10 October 2024)
7. Division in the ruling class of Israel
Before taking even more overt and drastic steps, Netanyahu had to ensure that he was free from internal Israeli law to do as he pleased. For a long time, external laws governing humane treatment of opponents, and modes of conducting warfare, and in particular – any attempts at restrain from any United Nations or International Court of Justice – were treated as poppy-cock by Israeli authorities. But internally within the state of Israel, the Supreme Court remained a potential obstruction. Especially as Netanyahu still had charges pending on corrupt practices.
The reforms essentially would have enabled any government to be completely at liberty from any restraining orders from an independent judiciary. Netanyahu proposed to obliterate this potential obstacle – but was confronted by an enormous resistance:
“Since the start of the year (i.e.2023 – Ed) , huge weekly protests have been held by people opposed to the government’s reform plans. The scale of the protests has escalated, with tens of thousands of people packing the streets in towns and cities across the country. Undeterred, the government (which has a comfortable majority in parliament) passed into law in July the first planned change – a so-called “reasonableness” bill. This removed the power of the Supreme Court (and lower courts) to cancel government decisions deemed “extremely unreasonable”. Protesters have called for all the planned reforms to be scrapped and for the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to resign. They are supported by Mr Netanyahu’s political rivals, as well as former top officials in Israel’s military, intelligence and security services, former chief justices, and prominent legal figures and business leaders amongst others.
In a move which has caused deep concern on both sides, hundreds of military reservists, including air force pilots crucial to Israel’s defence, have threatened to refuse to report for service. This has led to warnings that it could impair Israel’s military capabilities.
What are people so angry about? Mr Netanyahu’s opponents say the reforms will severely undermine the country’s democracy by weakening the judicial system, the only tool for keeping the government’s use of its powers in check. Underlying this is strong opposition to the kind of government currently in office – the most right-wing in Israel’s history – and to Mr Netanyahu himself.
What are the legal reforms at the centre of the crisis?
They concern the power of the government versus the power of the courts to scrutinise and even overrule the government. The government – and others – say reform is overdue, though the plans go much further than many people would like.
Besides the “reasonableness” law, the government wants to:
– Weaken the power of the Supreme Court to review or throw out laws, enabling a simple majority of one in the Knesset (parliament) to overrule such decisions, although Mr Netanyahu has said he will not proceed with this particular reform
– Have a decisive say over who becomes a judge, including in the Supreme Court, by increasing its representation on the committee which appoints them
– Scrap the requirement for ministers to obey the advice of their legal advisers – guided by the attorney general – which they currently have to do by law.”
Raffi Berg; “Israel judicial reform explained: What is the crisis about?”; BBC, 11 September 2023; Accessed 10 October 2024
“Israel has been politically divided over proposed judicial reforms. In 2022, the new governing coalition announced plans to reform Israel’s judiciary, which set off protests for most of 2023. In particular, the anti-reform campaign made a public effort to suggest a lack of military support for the government, heavily publicizing claims that IDF reservists would refuse to report for service.”
Daniel Byman, et al; “Hamas’s October 7 Attack: Visualizing the Data”; CSIS Ibid December 19, 2023.
In many ways, the events of October 7th 2024, loosened several pressures and restraint upon Netanyahu and his ultra-right wing allies. This is noted by many observers including the Council for Foreign Relations – not in any way a left wing organisation:
“Most of 2023, which overlapped with the Jewish years 5783-4, was
marked by deep internal divisions in Israel over “judicial reform”.
Large demonstrations, vicious political rhetoric, and a sharp split
between those who favored the reform as a way to limit excessive
judicial power and those who saw it as the end of democracy in Israel
heated Israeli politics to the boiling point.
But then came October 7, 2023, and the judicial reform was forgotten.”
Elliott Abrams, Linda Robinson, Ray Takeyh, and Steven A. Cook; “One Year After the October 7 Attacks: The Impact on Four Fronts”; Council for Foreign Relations; October 2, 2024 Accessed 10 October 2024
Netanyahu meanwhile had been carefully fueling Hamas. For example at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, he was quoted as saying:
“that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
Tal Schneider; “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces”; Times of Israel; October 8, 2023; Accessed 10 October 2024.
8. Expertise and skills of Mossad – the Intelligence arm of the Israeli state
By today the secret forces of the state in “The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations’ – otherwise known as Mossad – are immense. It is coupled together with Aman (military intelligence) and Shin Bet (internal security).
According to Wikipedia Mossad is exceptionally well funded:
“Its annual budget is estimated to be around 10 billion (US$2.73 billion), and it is estimated that it employs around 7,000 people, making it one of the world’s largest espionage agencies.”
wikipedia: Accessed 10 October
Indeed it has become extremely expert at infiltration, sabotage and covert assassinations. This was documented and convincingly shown in ‘Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations’ by Ronen Bergman. No credible sources deny all this.
Perhaps the capstone that tell us how almost ‘omnipresent’ Mossad is in today’s Middle East was the spectacular ‘pager’ attacks on Hezbollah operatives inside Lebanon:
“Israel carried out part of its device attack targeting Hezbollah by concealing explosives inside the batteries of pagers brought into Lebanon, according to two high-ranking Lebanese security officials, who said the technology was so advanced that it was virtually undetectable.
Lebanese security officials watched a series of controlled explosions of some of the weaponized pagers, as investigations into who manufactured the wireless communication devices and how they made their way into Hezbollah’s pockets continued.
The pagers used in the controlled explosions were switched off at the time of the attack on September 17, which meant they did not receive the message that caused the compromised devices to detonate. The officials had a front-row seat to see just how catastrophic the blasts would have been to those carrying the devices and others around them. Thousands of explosions struck Hezbollah members last week, targeting their pagers on Tuesday, and then walkie-talkies a day later. In all, the blasts killed at least 37 people, including some children, and injured nearly 3,000, according to Lebanese health authorities, many of them civilian bystanders. The attack blindsided the group, which had opted for analogue technologies after forgoing cell phones to avoid Israeli infiltration.
Israel has not commented directly on the attacks, but CNN has learned that the explosions were the result of a joint operation by Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, and the Israeli military. Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, tacitly acknowledged his country’s role the day after the pager attack, praising “excellent achievements, together with the Shin Bet, together with Mossad.” Tamara Qiblawi, Eliza Mackintosh, Wayne Chang, Eric Cheung, Yong Xiong, Kara Fox, Gianluca Mezzofiore and Balint Bardi, “Israel concealed explosives inside batteries of pagers sold to Hezbollah, Lebanese officials say”; CNN September 27, 2024 Accessed 13 October.
While the power of Mossad is recognised, the ramification of this to the current horror being unleashed upon the people in Lebanon is not widely acknowledged. It is this very extraordinary power and skill of the Mossad that should inform us about the current events in Palestine today and the neighbouring states of Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Egypt.
Part 2: The events of October 7th and the prior knowledge of the impending events
The main details of the initial attack are well known. In this recap no attempt it made to give all the horrific details. But here some lesser known facts are stressed instead, as they raise several unanswered questions. Collectively they give rise to hypotheses suggesting a calculated escalation of the Middle East conflagration.
1. Training for the attack Exercises of ‘Strong Pillar’
Attacks by forces led by Hamas and 3 other smaller groups, were planned for several months. These were Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Gaza’s second largest armed faction, the Mujahideen Brigades and Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades. The groups had four full-scale practice drills. These were publicly announced as a ‘success”.
They were very well known to Israeli personnel. Moreover the training was “realistic” and involved building mock-ups of the Israeli defence structures. They were collectively known as ‘Strong Pillar’. The exercises were close to Israeli observation towers, and easily locatable on commercial GPS locating services. The Israel Defence Force (IDF) were obviously monitoring activity near the border carefully, as usual:
“The groups carried out joint drills in Gaza which closely resembled the tactics used during the deadly assault – including at a site less than 1km (0.6 miles) from the barrier with Israel – and posted them on social media.
They practised hostage-taking, raiding compounds and breaching Israel’s defences during these exercises, the last of which was held just 25 days before the attack. BBC Arabic and BBC Verify have collated evidence which shows how Hamas brought together Gaza’s factions to hone their combat methods – and ultimately execute a raid into Israel which has plunged the region into war.
On 29 December 2020, Hamas’s overall leader Ismail Haniyeh declared the first of four drills codenamed Strong Pillar a “strong message and a sign of unity” between Gaza’s various armed factions….
The second Strong Pillar drill was held almost exactly one year later. Ayman Nofal, a commander in the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades – the official name for Hamas’s armed wing – said the aim of the exercise on 26 December 2021 was to “affirm the unity of the resistance factions”.
He said the drills would “tell the enemy that the walls and engineering measures on the borders of Gaza will not protect them”. Another Hamas statement said the “joint military manoeuvres” were designed to “simulate the liberation of settlements near Gaza” – which is how the group refers to Israeli communities. The exercise was repeated on 28 December 2022, and propaganda images of fighters practising clearing buildings and overrunning tanks in what appears to be a replica of a military base were published to mark the event…
Hamas went to great lengths to make sure the drills were realistic.
In 2022, fighters practised storming a mock Israeli military base built just 2.6km (1.6 miles) from the Erez crossing, a route between Gaza and Israel controlled by the IDF. BBC Verify has pinpointed the site in the far north of Gaza, just 800m (0.5 miles) from the barrier, by matching geographic features seen in the training footage to aerial images of the area. As of November 2023, the site was still visible on Bing Maps.
The training camp was within 1.6km (1 mile) of an Israeli observation tower and an elevated observation box, elements in a security barrier Israel has spent hundreds of millions of dollars constructing…
On 10 September 2023, the so-called joint committee room published images on its dedicated Telegram channel of men in military uniforms carrying out surveillance of military installations along the Gaza barrier.
Two days later, the fourth Strong Pillar military exercise was staged, and by 7 October, all the tactics that would be deployed in the unprecedented attack had been rehearsed.
Fighters were filmed riding in the same type of white Toyota pickup trucks which
were seen roaming through southern Israel the following month.”
Abdelali Ragad, Richard Irvine-Brown, Benedict Garman and Sean Seddon; “How Hamas built a force to attack Israel on 7 October” BBC 27 November 2023; accessed 3 October 2024
The drills were designed to practice how to cross the border and capture hostages as bargaining weights for the release of prisoners held by the Israel government.
2. The actual attack on October 7, 2023
The major details of the numbers of attackers and the number of casualties are well known. By and large the various reports agree in the main. We do not need to reiterate in great detail, but some key statistics are useful to bear in mind now:
“The attack began with a barrage of 2,500 rockets, followed by cyberattacks and drones to disable Israeli military communications and warning systems. This allowed between 3,000-5,000 Hamas combatants to cross into Israel through 30 breaches in the border via paragliders, motorcycles, and on foot. Individual Hamas units killed Israeli civilians and soldiers in military outposts. After the first wave of Hamas combatants crossed, Gazan civilians poured over the border and looted the homes of murdered Israelis. Some also reportedly took Israelis hostage.”
David Wurmser, J. Michael Waller, Andrei Illarionov, and Kyle Shideler; “Case Study: Hamas’ October 7, 2023 Attack on Israel”; Center for Security Policy”; April 2024; accessed 10 October 2024.
“over 1,000 Hamas fighters entered southern Israel through nearly 30 breach points in the country’s border wall with Gaza. The 40-mile-long barrier, which cost over $1 billion and was upgraded in 2021, was designed to prevent infiltration with a variety of surveillance and defense technologies. These include cameras, radars, and other sensors, as well as barbed wire and an underground concrete barrier to prevent tunneling. In addition to the 20-foot-tall fence, observation towers with remote machine gun turrets were positioned, in some areas, every 500 feet along the border. To overcome these defenses, Hamas employed a combination of innovative tactics. Using commercial quadcopter drones, Hamas dropped explosives onto the observation towers, disrupting Israel’s sensors, communications, and weapons systems—a creative use of drones, which are also being used in new ways by Russian and Ukrainian forces. Hamas fighters also blew holes in the border fence with explosives and then used bulldozers to widen the gaps to allow vehicles to pass through.”
Daniel Byman et al; “Hamas’s October 7 Attack: Visualizing the Data”; CSIS Ibid; December 19, 2023;
Reports agree that around 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.
3. Prior knowledge of the attacks by both Israeli and USA intelligence
It is important to emphasise that not only was the plan known and understood by the IDF, the USA government had also warned the Israelis that this was about to occur.
Robert Dover (Professor of Intelligence and National Security, University Hull UK) says that a document called “The Jericho Wall Document” outlined the attack and was with Israeli intelligence “about a year prior” to the attack:
“… It is becoming clear that Israeli military intelligence had collected
specific information on how Hamas could invade. Additionally, they had evidence of what assets and techniques Hamas were likely to use, and what Israeli facilities and possessions would be targeted. From, observing rehearsals, they also had information about the level of violence Hamas terrorists were willing to inflict. Evidence suggests that about a year ago Israeli analysts had a copy of the Hamas attack playbook, the Jericho Wall document. This detailed how Hamas fighters would breach the border using paragliders, drones and rockets, and what they would seek to attack. The October 7 invasion was a very close copy of this plan. An intelligence unit had also observed a rehearsal exercise in Gaza City, and drawn the document and exercise together to correctly assess the relevance of both. The analyst had shown remarkable insight when she suggested to her superiors that the rehearsal was not for a raid, but an invasion, according to evidence collected by the New York Times.”
Robert Dover; “Why Israel’s intelligence chiefs failed to
listen to October 7 warnings – and the lessons to be learned”; ‘The Conversation’; Dec 7 2023; Accessed 10 October, 2024.
The BBC considers that it is “inconceivable” that Israeli Intelligence were unaware of the prior exercises:
“The exercises were reported on in Israel, so it’s inconceivable they were not being closely monitored by the country’s extensive intelligence agencies. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have previously carried out air strikes to disrupt Hamas’s training activities. In April 2023, they bombed the site used for the first ‘Strong Pillar’ drill…
Weeks before the attacks, female surveillance soldiers near the Gaza border reportedly warned of unusually high drone activity and that Hamas was training to take over observation posts with replicas of their positions.
But, according to reports in the Israeli media, they say they were ignored.
Brigadier General Amir Avivi, a former IDF deputy commander in Gaza, told the BBC:
“There was a lot of intelligence that they were doing this training – after all, the videos are public, and this was happening just hundreds of metres from the fence (with Israel).”
But he said while the military knew about the drills, they “didn’t see what they were training for”.”
Abdelali Ragad, Richard Irvine-Brown, Benedict Garman and Sean Seddon“How Hamas built a force to attack Israel on 7 October” BBC 27 November 2023; accessed 3 October 2024
Brigadier General Amir Avivi is expecting us to swallow this nonsense without quibbles. Indeed, other military analysts also ask us to accept that a “wrong conclusion” was arrived at:
“Hugh Lovatt, a Middle East analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Israel would have been aware of the joint training drills but “reached the wrong conclusion”, assessing they amounted to the “standard” activity of paramilitary groups in the Palestinian territories, rather than being “indicative of a looming large-scale attack”.
Abdelali Ragad, Richard Irvine-Brown, Benedict Garman and Sean Seddon“How Hamas built a force to attack Israel on 7 October” BBC 27 November 2023; accessed 3 October 2024
However the pattern of Mossad behaviour, and subsequent events suggest alternative – in our view – superior hypotheses.
4. Rapid ferocious attacks launched upon Palestinian civilians, hospital, relief agencies, and infra-structure.
Israel attacked Gazan civilians immediately within one week of the attack, including:
“750 “military targets” overnight in the densely populated Gaza Strip, including 12 high-rise buildings.”
“US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Israeli government showed him photographs and videos of Hamas atrocities, including of a baby riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded and young people burned… Human Rights Watch accused Israel of using white phosphorus munitions in its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon… (Israel – ed) military ordered 1.1 million people out of northern Gaza… The UN “considers it impossible for the relocation to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said of the Israeli military’s call to depopulate northern Gaza.
“The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”
Israeli air attacks have made major cemeteries in Gaza too dangerous to reach so mourning families are burying their dead in informal graveyards dug in empty lots. Israel’s public broadcaster Kan said the Israeli death toll had risen to more than 1,300, and at least 3,000 wounded. Gaza authorities said more than 6,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 6,000 wounded.” Israel-Hamas war: List of key events, day 7; Al-Jazeera News October 13th, 2023; Accessed last October 12 2024
5. Immediate Israeli manufacture of exaggerated, horrific and false claims to smear Hamas and to heighten international revulsion
To heighten an international revulsion against the individual terror actions of Hamas, a deliberate and highly successful strategy of false claims was followed by Israeli state and its multiple actors. These not only inflated claims of numbers of casualties, but also painted a lurid picture of Hamas militants.
(i) First exaggerating the number of those killed by Hamas, and refusing to acknowledge killing of civilians by their own forces because of the IDF ‘Hannibal Strategy’:
“Chris Hedges: There’s growing evidence that in the chaotic fighting that took place once Hamas militants entered Israel on October 7, the Israeli military decided to target not only Hamas fighters but the Israeli captives with them. (For example – Ed) Tuval Escape, a member of the security team for Kibbutz Be’eri, told the Israeli press, that he set up a hotline to coordinate between kibbutz residents and the Israeli army. Escapa told the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, that his desperation began to set in. “The commanders in the field made difficult decisions, including shelling houses on their occupants in order to eliminate the terrorists along with the hostages.”
The newspaper reported that Israeli commanders were, “Compelled to request an aerial strike against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing to Gaza in order to repulse the terrorists who had seized control.”
That base housed Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers. Israel, in 1986, instituted a military policy called the Hannibal Directive, apparently named for the Carthaginian general who poisoned himself rather than be captured by the Romans following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah. The directive is designed to prevent Israeli troops from falling into enemy hands through the maximum use of force, even at the cost of killing the captured soldiers and civilians. The directive was executed during the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza, known as Operation Protective Edge. Hamas fighters on August 1, 2014, captured an Israeli soldier, Lieutenant Hadar Golden. In response, Israel dropped more than 2,000 bombs, missiles, and shells on the area where he was being held. Golden was killed along with over 100 Palestinian civilians. The directive was supposedly rescinded in 2016….
Max Blumenthal: “What we do know is there were orders from the top to kill Israeli civilians if Hamas gunmen were around them in order to get the gunmen. And it’s like the same military doctrine that’s being employed in Gaza: Any civilian is a target if they are the “terrorist’s next-door neighbor.” Israel actually calls it the Neighbor Policy. They don’t know any other doctrine. They don’t have any other means of targeting and they weren’t prepared, obviously, for this military onslaught. So they went to their core doctrine of bombing everything in sight.”
“Did Israel’s Military Kill Its Own Civilians On Oct. 7?” The Chris Hedges Report at the ‘Real News’; Nov 17 2023; Accessed on October 3, 2024;
While that above quote comes from a leftist journalist, it is in general supported by the bourgeois press. We only here cite the ‘Times of Israel’:
“As the IDF fought to regain control of the Gaza border communities, Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram, the commander of the IDF’s 99th Division, ordered a tank to fire on Cohen’s home, where terrorists were holding 14 hostages. The tank fired two shells toward the house. Of the 14 people who had been held hostage, 13 were killed in the intense firefight between Israeli troops and the Hamas terrorists. It remains unclear how many of the 13 were harmed by the tank fire.“ https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-chief-shown-results-of-probe-into-october-7-fighting-at-kibbutz-beeri/
Emanuel Fabian; “IDF chief shown results of probe into October 7 fighting at Kibbutz Be’eri”; Times of Israel 8 July 2024; Accessed on October 3, 2024;
(ii) Second – Making widely publicised and spurious claims that Hamas had “beheaded” Israeli babies:
This drew explicitly upon the media strategy exemplified in the USA attack on Iraqi forces then occupying Kuwait. (False testimony of Nayira – daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA :
“Nayirah’s last name was al-Ṣabaḥ… she was the daughter of Saud Nasser Al-Saud Al-Sabah, the erstwhile Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized as part of a wider public relations campaign conducted by the Kuwaiti government-in-exile’s Citizens for a Free Kuwait, which sought to encourage American military involvement against Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait through coordination with the American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton.”(Wikipedia Accessed 12 October, 2024. See also many news reports including Los Angeles Times March 6, 1992; John R. MacArthur “Remember Nayirah, Witness for Kuwait?” New York Times, Jan 6, 1992; Christian Science Monitor September 6, 2002)
Similar hear-say and biased reports – this time alleging decapitation were voiced after October 7, 2023:
“In early October 2023, politicians, news media, and activists in the U.S. and U.K. spread a rumor about Hamas fighters supposedly beheading as many as 40 Israeli infants… In the early hours of the rumor’s life, many news outlets cited reporting by the Israeli news channel i24News, which published a YouTube livestream titled, “Beheaded Babies and Women Found in Kfar Aza,” featuring correspondent Nicole Zedeck. In the video,
Zedeck walked through an area with body bags, and, at one point stated, “One of the commanders here said at least 40 babies were killed — some of them, their heads cut off.” …
As we looked into the claim, we found contradictory reports from journalists and Israeli army officials, and almost no independent corroborations of the alleged war crime, leading to concerns …
that such a claim may be premature or unsubstantiated.
U.S. President Joe Biden was among those who claimed “terrorists [were] beheading children,” while speaking at a meeting of Jewish leaders at the White House. His office later clarified that he had not actually seen evidence of such beheadings. Meanwhile, mainstream news outlets, from Metro News in the U.K. to Sky News Australia, also reported on the alleged atrocity, with Fox News in an Oct. 10 headline claiming, “At least 40 babies, some beheaded, found by Israel soldiers in Hamas-attacked village.”
Nur Ibrahim, “Were Israeli Babies Beheaded by Hamas Militants During Attack on Kfar Aza?”; Snopes, Oct. 12, 2023; accessed October 3, 2024
(iii ) Claiming that a policy of widespread rapes and sexual attacks was adopted by Hamas.
Whoever launches such attacks are reprehensible and should be condemned. Here Israeli sources and amplified by media world-wide charged there was a deliberate policy of Hamas rape of Israeli women during the attack which did result in several rapes. Only very much later, did other news sources reveal flagrant manipulations of the truth:
“Otmazgin — a volunteer commander with ZAKA, an Israeli search and rescue organization — saw the body of a teenager, shot dead and separated from her family in a different room. Her pants had been pulled down below her waist. He thought that was evidence of sexual violence… Regardless, AP’s examination of ZAKA’s handling of the now debunked stories shows how information can be clouded and distorted in the chaos of the conflict…
it took ZAKA months to acknowledge the accounts were wrong, allowing them to proliferate. And the fallout from the debunked accounts shows how the topic of sexual violence has been used to further political agendas.”
Tia Goldenberg, and Julia Frankel, “How 2 debunked accounts of sexual violence on Oct. 7 fueled a global dispute over Israel-Hamas war
PBS news May 22, 2024; Accessed October 3 2024
These claims of rape were the focus of – again much later – Al Jazeera ‘I Unit’ rebuttals in March 2024:
“Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) has carried out a forensic analysis of the events of October 7… October 7 reveals widespread human rights abuses by Hamas fighters and others who followed them through the fence from the Gaza Strip and draws up a comprehensive list of those killed. But the investigation by the I-Unit, which examined hours of footage from CCTV, dashcams, personal phones and headcams of killed Hamas fighters, has also found that many of the stories that came out in the days following the attack were false.
These include claims of atrocities such as the mass killing and beheading of babies as well as allegations of widespread and systematic rape – stories that were used repeatedly by politicians in Israel and the West to justify the ferocity of the subsequent bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which has so far killed nearly 32,000 people… After a thorough analysis of all available data, the I-Unit concluded that claims by the Israeli army that it found eight burned babies at a house in Kibbutz Be’eri were untrue.
The analysis found that there were no babies in the house, and the 12 people inside were almost certainly killed by Israeli forces when they stormed the building. This was one of a number of incidents where the police and army appear to have killed Israeli citizens. The I-Unit identified 19 such victims, but the true figure is likely to be higher. It also identified 27 captives who died between their homes and the Gaza fence in circumstances that have not been explained. Gun camera footage from Israeli Apache helicopters shows numerous strikes on vehicles and individuals making their way back to Gaza.
“My concern with this footage is we cannot tell whether they are Hamas gunmen or …. hostages. And I don’t believe the helicopter pilot, or the machine gun operator would be able to tell either,” said Chris Cobb-Smith, a British army veteran and human rights researcher”….
“The I-Unit also examined claims that widespread sexual violence had occurred on October 7. It concluded that while isolated rapes may have taken place, there was insufficient evidence to support allegations that rape had been “widespread and systematic”. “To show that it was widespread and systematic, we would need a lot more evidence than has come to light to date and a lot more corroborative evidence than is being put out there,” says Madeleine Rees, general secretary of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
“October 7: Forensic analysis shows Hamas abuses, many false Israeli claims”; Richard Sanders and Al Jazeera Investigative Unit; 21 Mar 2024. Accessed 11 October 2024
6. UN Investigations rendered incomplete at least in part by Israeli non-cooperation
The UN noted that “at the invitation of the Government, Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) Pramila Patten led an official visit to Israel, supported by a team of technical experts, from 29 January to 14 February 2024.”
In March 2024 the UN special report was widely reported including these following remarks:
“A United Nations report released Monday said there were “reasonable grounds to believe” sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred at several locations during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel. The report by the U.N.’s special envoy on sexual violence Pramila Patten said there was also reason to believe sexual abuse of Israeli hostages still believed to be held in Gaza was “ongoing.”
“Credible circumstantial information, which may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, was also gathered,” the 24-page U.N. report said.”
Jamie Gray; “U.N. says “reasonable grounds to believe” Hamas carried out sexual attacks on Oct. 7, and likely still is”; CBS News March 5, 2024
But the report itself also noted “Efforts to collect evidence were beset by the limited availability of forensic information “ amongst other limitations:
“the mission team did not request to visit the Gaza Strip, where several other United Nations entities are present, including some that monitor and address sexual and gender-based violence…
The scope and parameters of the visit were agreed in advance with the relevant authorities, to ensure, unimpeded and confidential access to interlocutors and information. The mission team adhered to standard UN methodology..
The mission team conducted a total of 33 meetings with Israeli national institutions, including relevant line ministries, as well as the Israeli security forces. It visited the Israeli National Center of Forensic Medicine, the Shura military base, the morgue to which the bodies of victims were transferred, as well as four locations affected by the 7 October attacks, in relation to which reports of sexual violence had emerged. The mission team reviewed over 5,000 photographic images and approximately 50 hours of footage of the attacks, … It conducted confidential interviews with a total of 34 interviewees, including with survivors and witnesses of the 7 October attacks, released hostages, first responders, health and service providers amongst others. While the number of survivors/victims of sexual violence of 7 October remains unknown, the mission team was made aware that a small number of those are reportedly undergoing treatment and continue to experience severe mental distress and trauma. Despite concerted efforts to encourage them to come forward, the mission team was not able to interview any of these survivors/victims.
… Efforts to collect evidence were beset by the limited availability of forensic information, due to the large number of casualties and widely-dispersed crime scenes; a context of active hostilities; the prioritization of search and rescue operations as well as the recovery, identification and burial of the deceased in accordance with religious practices over the collection of forensic evidence; the loss of potentially valuable evidence due to the interventions of some untrained volunteer first responders; the alteration of crime scenes in some cases, as well as the large number of bodies affected by extensive burn damage.
The mission team also faced specific challenges in the gathering and verification of incidents of sexual violence included: limited professionally-gathered forensic material; inaccurate and unreliable forensic interpretations by non-professionals; the extremely limited availability of victims/survivors and witnesses of sexual violence due inter alia to the internal displacement of affected communities; the lack of public trust and confidence in national and international institutions; the questioning by some of the narrow focus of the mission on crimes of sexual violence given the range of other grave crimes committed on 7 October and its aftermath; and the intense media scrutiny of individuals whose accounts have appeared in the public domain, increasing trauma and fears of social stigmatization…
In terms of recommendations, SRSG Patten encourages the Government of Israel to grant access to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel to conduct fully-fledged independent investigations into all alleged violations to complement and deepen the findings emerging from her mission. She calls on Hamas to immediately and unconditionally release all individuals held in captivity and to ensure their protection, including from sexual violence. ”
Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict; “Following visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Ms. Pramila Patten, finds sexual violence occurred on 7 October, and against hostages and calls for a fully-fledged investigation“; Emphasis added UN website 4 March 2024
Much later, by June 2024, the UN published a rather more exhaustive report investigating these and other claims. But clearly at every step, it had been continued to experience obstruction by the Israeli government:
“#2. The Commission sent four requests for information to Israel and one request to the State of Palestine. Israel did not respond. The State of Palestine provided the Commission with information. The Commission submitted six requests for access to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Israel persists in not responding….
#8. Israeli officials not only refused to cooperate with the Commission’s investigation but also reportedly barred medical professionals and others from being in contact with the Commission after it approached medical professionals in Israel in December 2023. 4 The Commission was not able to visit the sites of the violations as the Israeli Government has prevented it accessing Israel.”
Detailed findings on attacks carried out on and after 7 October 2023 in Israel -Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (A/HRC/56/CRP.3) UN Document Source: UN HRC Posted: 12 Jun 2024. Accessed 11 October 2024
Accordingly the UN findings remained of limited scope, as the UN essentially acknowledged:
“#26. “The Commission has reviewed testimonies obtained by journalists and the Israeli police concerning rape but has not been able to independently verify such allegations, due to a lack of access to victims, witnesses and crime sites and the obstruction of its investigations by the Israeli authorities. The Commission was unable to review the unedited version of such testimonies. For the same reasons, the Commission was also unable to verify reports of sexualized torture and genital mutilation. Additionally, the Commission found some specific allegations to be false, inaccurate or contradictory with other evidence or statements and discounted these from its assessment. “
Obtained via UN Document Source: UN HRC Posted: 12 Jun 2024
Accessed 11 October 2024
However the UN Report did unequivocally note that:
29. “Women and women’s bodies were used as victory trophies by male perpetrators. The abduction, violence and humiliation of women were put on public display, either on the streets of Gaza and/or by recording the bodies of women or the acts of the crime and publishing it online for propaganda purposes. This type of gender-based crime was identified by the Commission in many locations, women being the primary but not the only target.
30. The Commission documented the desecration of both male and female bodies, including sexual acts such as undressing the body and/or displaying it partially undressed in public. In several cases the victims’ undressed bodies were displayed as a means of humiliation and disrespect….”
Obtained via UN Document Source: UN HRC Posted: 12 Jun 2024
Accessed 11 October 2024
The claims of a policy and widespread occurrence of rape in the break-out attack may never be resolved due to state authority refusal to enable access to evidence.
Moreover some evidence to either establish or reject the claims was unavoidably lost due to Jewish religious laws that require early body disposal, although forensic examination could possibly have been done.
Finally it should also be noted on this claim, that a vehement lobby pushing these claims have been involved in brutal anti-humane practices when it comes to Palestinians. One particularly notable example is Cochav Elkayam-Levy as noted by Arun Gupta:
“Israeli feminists attacked women’s organisations as rape denialists when they asked for evidence that Hamas committed rape on 7 October. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, founder of Israel’s Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, equated UN women’s groups requests for forensic evidence to the “same denial mechanisms… of rape.” She said that the UN groups should believe her commission because they are “respected women…
But Elkayam-Levy, who has played an outsized role in influencing media, is outraged that she needs to offer any evidence of rape:
“Am I the one who needs to provide the evidence for the terrorists’ deeds? ..”
Elkayam-Levy has served in the Israeli army’s spokesperson’s unit and founded an institute that has close ties to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s National Security Council, according to Mondoweiss. An “expert” on human rights, she authored a 49-page paper published in the Harvard International Law Journalto justify force-feeding Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike, an act which is in violation of international humanitarian law.
She brings this background to the commission, whose main task is cancelling critics. “In addition to ripping the mask off of women’s organisations associated with the UN,” Haaretz said, “Elkayam-Levy and her colleagues took part” in the campaign to sack the director of a sexual assault centre in Canada for signing an open letter stating rape reports were an “unverified accusation”. Her “next target” was Reem Alsalem, a UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, apparently because she is of “Jordanian-Palestinian background”. The commission, however, has failed to produce a promised report on “Hamas sexual crimes” and it looks as financially dodgy as Zaka. Elkayam-Levy is under fire for hogging the spotlight, spreading fake atrocities like the one about the butchered pregnant mother, and trying to rake in $8 million in 2024 for the commission that has become a one-woman show.”
Arun Gupta, “Opinion: Israel has manufactured an industrial-scale version of Jim Crow rape hoaxes”; Middle East Monitor; July 3, 2024.
Gupta pointedly comments:
“Since 7 October, UN Women has regularly reported on sexual and gender-based violence that Israel has inflicted on Palestinian women and girls. This includes mass starvation, one million displaced, more than 7,000 dead mothers, 3,000 new widows, 17,000 orphans and the destruction of electricity, health, water and sanitation infrastructure that has led to the deaths of “hundreds of babies”, decimated menstrual hygiene, made breast-feeding a baby “often impossible” for nearly 100,000 lactating women, pregnancy a nightmare, and led to hundreds of birth complications every week.
It gets worse. On 19 February, four UN experts and two Special Rapporteurs described “credible allegations of egregious human rights violations” such as “extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children”; arbitrarily detaining hundreds of Palestinian women and girls in inhumane and degrading conditions that included severe beatings; and detaining Gazan women in cages “in the rain and cold, without food.” The experts expressed distress at reports of women and girls “subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers. At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence.”
Rather than believe Palestinian women, Elkayam-Levy claims that UN women’s groups are engaged in the “appropriation of the events of 7 October to Palestinian suffering” by documenting sexual crimes committed by Israeli forces.”
Arun Gupta, “Opinion: Israel has manufactured an industrial-scale version of Jim Crow rape hoaxes”; Middle East Monitor; July 3, 2024.
Once more we affirm that any type of sexual violence by either side is abhorrent. Whether the crimes were possibly/likely perpetrated by individuals affiliated with Hamas; or by Israeli soldiers in the notorious camps holding Palestinians (Simon Speakman Cordall; ‘Everything is legitimate’: Israeli leaders defend soldiers accused of rape”; Al Jazeera 9 August 2024; Vivian YeeJohnatan Reiss and Gabby Sobelman;
“Israeli Troops Held for Questioning in Prisoner Abuse Investigation”; New York Times July 29, 2024)
7. The International Court of Justice
Under pressure in large part due to the government of South Africa, the International Court of Justice at the Hague made some momentous statements indicting Israel and its leaders of “genocide”. In January 2024:
“the International Court of Justice found plausible risk that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and ordered provisional measures but stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire. The ruling was read out by the president of the court, Joan Donoghue. She began with the finding that South Africa had jurisdiction to bring the case against Israel.
Judge Joan Donoghue: In the court’s view, the aforementioned facts and circumstances are sufficient to conclude that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible. This is the case with respect to the right of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts identified in Article III and the right of South Africa to seek Israel’s compliance with the latter’s obligations under the convention.
The court then turns to the condition of the link between the plausible rights claimed by South Africa and the provisional measures requested. It considers that, by their very nature, at least some of the provisional measures sought by South Africa are aimed at preserving the plausible rights it asserts on the basis of the Genocide Convention in the present case — namely, the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts mentioned in Article III and the right of South Africa to seek Israel’s compliance with the latter’s obligations under the convention. Therefore, a link exists between the rights claimed by South Africa that the court has found to be plausible and at least some of the provisional measures requested.
Amy Goodman; “ International Court of Justice Orders Israel to Prevent Genocide in Gaza But Fails to Order Ceasefire”; “Democracy Now”; January 26, 2024
On June 19 2024, the ICJ ruled that Israel’s occupation of West Bank and Jerusalem was illegal in international law:
“The International Court of Justice said on June 19 that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and its settlements there, violated international law — the most sweeping stance laid out by the world’s highest court on an issue that has been the subject of debates and resolutions at the United Nations for decades.
The court issued an advisory opinion that, while not binding, carries authority and legal weight. It is unlikely to affect Israeli policy but could shape international opinion.
“The Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the regime associated with them have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law,” the court’s president, Nawaf Salam, said as he issued the 83-page opinion at the Peace Palace in The Hague.
The court also said that Israel’s presence in the territories should come to an end “as rapidly as possible” and that Israel was “under an obligation to provide full reparation for the damage caused by its internationally wrongful acts to all natural or legal persons concerned.”
Friday’s pronouncement received heightened attention because of the war in Gaza, which began more than nine months ago, and because of a separate genocide case brought in the same court by South Africa against Israel in December over its conduct in the war.
In an initial ruling on the genocide case in January, the court ordered Israel to restrain its attacks in Gaza, and in May it ordered the country to immediately halt its military offensive in the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called the decision “mendacious” and said that Israeli settlement in all parts of its land was legal.”
“Global Court Says Israel’s Occupation of Territories Violates International Law”; New York Times; 19 July 2024;
“Sovereignty and self-determination: These words resounded on Friday, July 19, in the monumental courtroom of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. In a clear and unambiguous decision, the judges declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory “unlawful” and ruled that Israel is “under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence (…) as rapidly as possible.”
Stéphanie Maupas and Louis Imbert ‘International Court of Justice calls on Israel to end occupation of Palestinian territories ‘as rapidly as possible’. Le Monde; July 20, 2024, Accessed 10 October 2024.
Craig Mokhiber pointed out the implications that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movment – “have not only the moral high ground but also a firm grounding in international law”. Given the standard Zionist attacks on the BDS movment over the years, this was also significant:
“In its historic ruling, the ICJ found that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is entirely unlawful, that Israel practices apartheid and racial segregation, and that all states are under a duty to help bring this to an end, including by cutting off all economic, trade and investment relations with Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In other words, as a matter of international law, all countries are obliged to participate in an economic boycott of Israel’s activities in the occupied Palestinian territory and to divest from any existing economic relations there.
Because the court was bound by the parameters of the request from the UN General Assembly that triggered its findings, it did not address duties and obligations relating to activities inside the 1948 Green Line. However, the court’s authoritative statement of the requirements of international law makes clear that proponents of Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) have not only the moral high ground but also a firm grounding in international law.“
Craig Mokhiber; “The ICJ finds that BDS is not merely a right, but an obligation”; Mondoweiss; August 13, 2024
Moreover in another historic step the prosecutor at the ICJ requested arrest warrants for Israeli PM Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar:
“Regardless of the outcome of the cases, the prosecutor’s request that the court issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar helps cut through the polarizing language of the moment and promotes the idea that the basic rules of international humanitarian law apply to all. Anyone demanding an end to the conflict in Gaza and the release of all hostages from the grasp of Hamas should embrace the decision.
The prosecutor, Karim Khan, has also brought accusations against Hamas’s Muhammad Deif and Ismail Haniyeh. Mr. Khan has charged the three Hamas leaders with crimes against humanity and war crimes arising out of the Oct. 7 attacks, and he emphasized that some of these crimes are being committed “to this day,” a reference to the hostages still being held by the group.
Mr. Khan is charging Israel’s most senior leadership, including Mr. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. “
David Kaye; “With I.C.C. Arrest Warrants, Let Justice Take Its Course
New York Times; May 20, 2024
The USA represented by USA Secretary State Antony Blinken pays lip-service to humanitarian aid but steadfastly rejects meaningful intervention and is party to war crimes. It is notable that the USA rejected the decision of the International Court of Justice that the Israeli government is guilty of war crimes.
This is not surprising as the USA – represented by President Biden, Vice-President Harris and Sec State Blinken – have given green lights to the Israeli actions from the start. Disguising these lights by timid phrasing such as ‘cautions” and ‘injunctions to give aid’.
In reality Blinken has enabled the Israelis to bomb aid missions. This intent was made clear by Israeli Government officials:
“The substance of the Blinken-approved policy was starkly conveyed by Security Cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich, who later told the Israeli media: “We in the cabinet were promised at the outset that there would be monitoring, and that aid trucks hijacked by Hamas and its organizations [sic] would be bombed from the air, and the aid would be halted….
As 2023 came to an end, the UN Security Council voted on a resolution to facilitate the entry of aid into Gaza, which had been significantly watered down under U.S. pressure. UN Secretary General António Guterres explained: “Many people are measuring the effectiveness of the humanitarian operation in Gaza based on the number of trucks from the Egyptian Red Crescent, the UN, and our partners that are allowed to unload aid across the border. This is a mistake. The real problem is that the way Israel is conducting this offensive is creating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid inside Gaza….
On January 26, a panel of 17 judges found “a real and imminent risk” to the rights of Palestinians under the Genocide Convention. On the very same day, the U.S. cut funding for UNRWA after a narrative aggressively promoted by Israel Knesset members that the agency—which employed tens of thousands in the Gaza Strip—was also employing an untold number of members of Hamas and that “terrorists” had been students in UNRWA-run schools.
UNRWA “is a complete cover up for Hamas activities and terrorist activities,” Knesset member Sharren Haskel told the foreign media. “Hamas has taken over this organization.”
Speaking to the Israeli media, Haskel, who has along with the rest of the New Hope party joined the government coalition this week, added, “There are 13,000 UNRWA workers in the Gaza Strip, and they are all Hamas members or their relatives.”
The funding freeze, which has been described at the time as a “temporary pause,” has largely persisted to this day, crippling the agency’s humanitarian efforts. In UNRWA’s stead, Israel cultivated relations with foreign NGOs, most notably World Central Kitchen, who refrained from criticizing Israeli policy or insisting on a ceasefire, and lacked the infrastructure and expertise to make up for the debilitation of UNRWA.”
Yaniv Cogan; “Blinken Approved Policy to Bomb Aid Trucks, Israeli Cabinet Members”; ‘DropSite’ Oct 06, 2024
But according to Gidon Sa’ar Security Cabinet member, Blinken was party to the decision:
“On February 6th 2024, Security Cabinet member Gidon Sa’ar, head of the right wing New Hope party (which has since left the coalition)… declared “I’m currently of the opinion that humanitarian aid to Gaza should be halted immediately, until the formulation of a humanitarian aid [mechanism] which will not be subject to Hamas takeovers, nor the distribution of aid by Hamas to the civilian population.”
This policy, Sa’ar said, was already anchored in “a [Security] Cabinet decision that was made at the beginning of the war, which stated that the humanitarian supply from Egypt will be allowed as long as this supply did not reach Hamas, and that the supply that does reach Hamas will be thwarted.” According to him, the policy was endorsed by “The United States of America … in the talks that took place in the middle of October, including the talks with Secretary of State Blinken, who was visiting [Israel] and took part in discussions, mainly with the War Cabinet, on the subject of humanitarian aid.”
“Right now,” he said, “on the eve of another visit of the American Secretary of State in Israel, we must revive this idea, so as not to undermine the aim I mentioned earlier, which is one of the war aims, which is the destruction of Hamas’s governmental capabilities.”
As Sa’ar was speaking, Israeli policy was already shifting. On February 5th, the Israeli military shelled an UNRWA aid truck, leading the agency and the World Food Program to halt aid missions for weeks. The IDF spokesperson told the media the incident was “under review” and refused to provide additional details. One day later, however, Israeli outlet i24NEWS reported, based on unnamed “security sources” that the IDF had targeted “stolen Gaza aid trucks that Hamas uses as transportation for ammunition.”
That same day an Israeli airstrike targeted a police car which provided security escort to a flour truck, “ripping the passengers to pieces” according to witnesses. Leaflets bearing the picture of the destroyed vehicle were later dropped by the Israeli military over Gaza, warning: “Our message is clear; the Israeli security services will not allow the security apparatuses of Hamas to continue working…
On March 28, the International Court of Justice noted “unprecedented levels of food insecurity experienced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip over recent weeks,” and ordered Israel to “take all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay… the unhindered provision… of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care.”
Less than 24 hours later, Israel reportedly targeted and killed several local policemen who were securing aid deliveries in two separate attacks, along with some of their family members and unrelated bystander. And on the next day, the Israeli military killed 12 people, among them officials representing tribal committees, who were coordinating aid distribution efforts.
Two days later, Israel’s favored aid provider, World Central Kitchen, fell victim to the same policy: over the course of several minutes an IDF drone pursued a 7-member WCK team driving along a designated route, and, in three different airstrikes several kilometers apart, targeted and killed every single one of them.”
Yaniv Cogan; “Blinken Approved Policy to Bomb Aid Trucks, Israeli Cabinet Members”; ‘DropSite’ Oct 06, 2024
“U.S. press in the next few months revealed the State Department was happy to have the investigation conducted by the president and CEO of one of Israel’s largest arms manufacturers. The ultimate culprit for the killings—the policy that Blinken had brokered—was not amended.”
Yaniv Cogan; “Blinken Approved Policy to Bomb Aid Trucks, Israeli Cabinet Members”; ‘DropSite’ Oct 06, 2024; Ibid
Part Three: Broad picture of the Western imperialist and Israeli war plans now.
It is still far too early to paint the exact picture of events which are still unfolding. However now going beyond the Palestinian people, Israel and with the support of the USA – drills into Lebanon, attacks Iran, Syria, and Yemen. Thus far it has only launched missiles at Iran – but it is expected that there will be far more grave attacks upon Iran. Most plausibly aimed to destroy any nuclear capacity in the Arab Middle East.
Previously we had postulated that the Israeli attacks and assassinations upon high officials of the Hamas and Hizbullah organisations were designed to force the USA into the war stage with their boots on the ground (MLRG.online August 2024; MLRG.online April 19, 2024).
In retrospect we were incorrect. We had quite under-estimated the degree to which the USA had already committed to the venture of destroying the status quo in the Middle East. It seems now, much more likely to us, that the postponed Condoleeza Rice Plan – has simply been updated. Now it appears that the plan has been to use the Hamas break-out attack to “morally justify” a sweep into all territories that harboured anti-USA and anti-Israel sentiments.
Each Israeli tweak – after having pulverised Gaza, empowered even further the settlers on the West Bank -was calibrated. The Palestinians have been more than side-lined – a solution to the worries of Crown Prince MBS (See above). Each calibrated Israeli tweak – whether an assassination or an intense bombing – did three things:
i) Provoked a counter-attack which in turn could meet with further reprisal;
ii) Tested the capacity and willingness to fight of the Middle Eastern states;
iii) Paved the way for a full-scale invasion, as has happened now with Lebanon. It is likely to be followed with more attacks, including on Iran.
The overall USA global strategy is no doubt to seize authority in all areas contested by either China or Russia. We see the accelerating trend to the global confrontation that is coming, at which precise juncture is still unclear.
The goal in the events following October 7, 2023 – has been simply to seize the Middle East. This goal is in complete harmony with that of Israel.
Whether it is President Biden – or whether it is to be the shortly to be elected – either President Harris or President Trump – USA war objectives are quite clear:
(i) To prevent the reservoir of Iranian oil continuing to making its way to China.
(ii) Link up the Middle Eastern arm of the USA forces, with its forces in the Indian Ocean – including its newly re-enshrined vassal states of Bangla Desh (Bay of Bengal – Naval Cauldron of China versus USA – Behind the drama of Sheikh Hasin’s flight from Dakka”; MLRG.online 23 August 2024); and most recently Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka’s new pro-USA comprador President Anura Kumara Dissanayake – (Umesh Moramudali “Sri Lanka’s New President Is More a Pragmatist Than a Marxist”; The Diplomat; October 10, 2024 ) has already received the top USA Pacific Naval Commander. Admiral Steve Koehler:
“U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Meets President Anura Kumara Dissanayake:
Pledges US support in combating transnational threats.
Admiral Steve Koehler, a four-star U.S. Navy Admiral and Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, paid a courtesy call on President Anura Kumara Dissanayake at the Presidential Secretariat this morning (10th October). This visit marks the highest-level U.S. military engagement with Sri Lanka since 2021.
During the meeting, Admiral Koehler reaffirmed the strong partnership between the United States and Sri Lanka, emphasizing a shared commitment to promoting an enduring, resilient, free, and open Indo-Pacific region. Discussions focused on addressing rising security challenges in the Indian Ocean, enhancing maritime domain awareness, and improving disaster response capabilities.
Admiral Koehler pledged the U.S. commitment to supporting Sri Lanka in combating transnational threats such as drug smuggling and terrorism. He praised Sri Lanka’s ongoing efforts in combating drug smuggling and assured continued U.S. assistance in manpower training in the naval sector.”
Presidents Media Division ;“U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Meets President Anura Kumara Dissanayake”; PMD; October 10, 2024
(iii) The forces of the USA have been put onto a solid war footing with the re-strengthening of NATO following the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. To be quit clear we condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Theses at a time of an obvious attempted re-division of world ‘spheres of interest’ – What support should Marxists give to Russia? February 6, 2022 at ML Currents).
The emergence of the BRIC coalition is another concrete form of rivals to the USA – including China and Russia are attempting to consolidate their forces.
(#13. The emergence of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa”; in “Changes in forms of imperialism over stages of capitalist development” Red Phoenix; March 26, 2023)
No doubt the invasion has served to crystallise the extension of NATO adherence into Scandinavia; and further stiffen the NATO spine in Germany. Despite the continued disruption of Hungary led by Orban, Europe has largely been an intact force that NATO and the USA can rely upon.
Hungary and the majority of the EU are at continued odds, over policy towards Russia amongst other matters (Jorge Liboreiro; “Viktor Orbán and Ursula von der Leyen clash in fiery debate at European Parliament”; Euronews, 9 October 2024). It would not be surprising if the EU and Hungary part ways.
It is in this overall context that Israel’s “overlooked” Hamas practice drills must be viewed. Bluntly put, it may well have been allowed to occur to claim the necessary ‘moral high ground’ by which to perpetrate the most vicious war conducted in real-time in the news – without an iota of world attempts to stop the barbarity. The ICJ is in the end toothless, as is the UN.
Ultimately only a socialist revolution can prevent the ongoing tragedy in Palestine and the surrounding states. Only a Marxist-Leninist party operating on the grounds of the Middle East can lead the toiling people to this step.
It is only in the overall historical context that Israel’s “overlooked” Hamas practice drills must be viewed. It is evident that Israel had long sought a moral predicate for the most vicious war conducted in the present era, a war which even now rages on without an iota of effort by governments and forces around the world to stop, or even curb the barbarity. The ICJ is in the end toothless, as is the UN.
The solidarity movement world wide has been extremely important in resisting the inhumanity of Israel. This must continue and Marxist-Leninist parties in those countries should make links with them in their own countries.
12 October, 2024