KCUR | You know how holiday stuff is expensive when you most want to buy it, but cheaper after the holidays?
The same dynamic will soon apply to what you pay for electricity on the Missouri side of the Kansas City area.
All
of Evergy’s Missouri customers will see a steep price hike for the
electricity they burn during the peak demand hours of late afternoon and
early evening.
It’s called time-of-use pricing and Jim Busch, the director of
industry analysis at the Missouri Public Service Commission, said it
makes sense.
“When you look at the overall benefits to the
consumers and the company and society as a whole,” he said, “it’s a
better path to go down.”
Evergy's change to the time-sensitive model comes with particularly dramatic upticks.
Electricity
costs more to generate at peak times, like summer evenings when
everyone’s running their air conditioners. Companies have to fire up
auxiliary generators to meet that demand.
That means burning
natural gas. Cranking up those gas plants costs more to kick out the
same power than coal, solar, wind and nuclear.
Time-of-use rates
reflect that added cost. Customers pay something closer to the actual
cost to produce power at a given time — and have an incentive to use
less electricity when it costs the most to produce.
Power
companies already send out bills based on time-of-use rates in much of
the western U.S. Evergy has allowed customers in both Missouri and
Kansas to voluntarily opt-in to variable price billing for years. And
the method is catching on, Busch.
But there’s something different about the time-of-use billing schedule for Missouri that Evergy customers will see this fall.
Typically,
the price of electricity varies only slightly over the course of the
day. Rates may go up or down one or two cents per kilowatt hour.
Some
Missouri Evergy customers, on the other hand, will see rates fluctuate
dramatically. Under the default plan, customers will be charged 9 cents a
kilowatt hour most of the time. But the rate vaults up to 38 cents
between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. on summer evenings. That’s a 322% spike.
“That is a huge increase,” said Daniel Zimny-Schmitt at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “There’s no way around that.”
He
said 38 cents a kilowatt hour, the top rate under Evergy’s default
plan, would mark one of the most expensive residential electricity rates
in the country outside of California.
The default plan —Evergy
brands it “Standard Peak Saver" — is one of four options that Missouri
Evergy customers can choose from by October. If you don’t do anything to
your Evergy account, that’s the billing structure you’ll have.
BBC |US
President Joe Biden has said a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital appears
to have been caused by Palestinian militants, backing Israel's account
of the incident as he visits the country.
Mr Biden, who landed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, said he was "deeply saddened and outraged" by the explosion.
Israel's military said it was caused by a failed Palestinian rocket launch.
But Palestinian officials said an Israeli air strike hit the hospital.
Health officials in Gaza have said almost 500 people were killed in the explosion, but no death toll has been confirmed.
Meanwhile,
Mr Biden has announced that an agreement has been reached with Israel
to allow humanitarian aid to move from Egypt into Gaza. However, Israel
said it would not allow any aid to pass through its own territory until
hostages being held by Hamas are released.
'Deeply saddened and outraged'
Mr Biden's high-stakes visit has been overshadowed by the blast at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on Tuesday evening, which has further inflamed tensions and sparked protests across the region.
He
landed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday where he was greeted warmly by Israel's
Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, before the pair hosted a joint news
conference.
"I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday," Mr Biden said.
"Based
on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team,
not you," he told Mr Netanyahu. "But there's a lot of people out there
not sure so we have to overcome a lot of things."
Mr
Biden was later asked by reporters what led him to conclude that Israel
was not responsible, and said: "The data I was shown by my defence
department."
In
the news conference, he reiterated his support for Israel and condemned
the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which launched an unprecedented
attack on Israel from Gaza on 7 October that left 1,400 people dead.
At least 3,000 people have been killed in retaliatory Israeli strikes on Gaza, according to Palestinian health official.
Mr
Biden had planned to travel from Israel to Jordan to meet King
Abdullah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian
President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, but that leg of the trip was cancelled
after the hospital blast on Tuesday.
Jordan
cancelled the meeting and condemned what it called "a great calamity
and a heinous war crime". The White House, meanwhile, said the decision
had been "made in a mutual way" and Mr Biden would call Mr Abbas and Mr
Sisi on his return flight to the US.
.@HananyaNaftali proudly boasted that Israel bombed Gaza’s ah-Ahli hospital before deleting and two minutes later lying that Hamas did it. He works directly under Netanyahu. pic.twitter.com/6QVS9ZoZhk
Details of who is responsible for the explosion are being hotly
debated by all parties, and this is still a developing story with a lot
of details yet to be revealed. But what I’d like to quickly document as
things unfold is the highly unusual number of mass media reporters I’ve
been seeing who haven’t hesitated to point to Israel as the probable
culprit.
After noting that Israel is blaming the blast on a failed rocket
launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), MSNBC foreign correspondent
Raf Sanchez quickly pointed out that PIJ rockets don’t tend to do
that kind of damage, but Israeli missiles do. He also noted that Israel
has an extensive history of lying about this sort of thing.
“The Israeli military at this point is not providing any evidence to
back up its claims that this was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket;
they are citing intelligence that they have not yet made public,”
Sanchez said.
“We should also say that this kind of death toll is not what you
normally associate with Palestinian rockets. These rockets are
dangerous, they are deadly, they do not tend to kill hundreds of people
in a single strike in the way that Israeli high explosives — especially
these bunker buster bombs that are used to target these Hamas tunnels
under Gaza City — do have the potential to kill hundreds of people.”
“And we should say finally that there are instances in the past where
the Israeli military has said things in the immediate aftermath of an
incident that have turned out not to be true in the long run,” Sanchez
added. “And the one example I’ll give you is that when the Al Jazeera
journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed in the occupied West Bank, the
Israeli military initially said that she was killed by Palestinian
gunmen, and it was only months and months later that they admitted that
it was likely an Israeli soldier who fired the fatal shot.”
CNN’s Clarissa Ward said essentially the same thing.
“I will say, just based on seeing these rocket attacks many times
over the years, that they don’t usually have an impact like that in
terms of the size of the blast, in terms of the scale of the death toll
and the scale of the damage,” Ward said. “It’s also not the first time,
it’s important to add, that we have seen the IDF categorically deny
something before being forced to kind of do an about-face after an
extensive investigation.”
nakedcapitalism | On Sunday (October 15), the Deputy Director General for Latin America
at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Jonathan Peled, summoned the Colombian
ambassador, Margarita Manjarez, to “deliver a reprimand” over Petro’s
“hostile and antisemitic statements against the State of Israel made
last week.” According to
the Israeli press release, Petro’s statements “constitute support for
the horrific acts of Hamas terrorists, inflame antisemitism, harm
representatives of the State of Israel, and threaten the safety of the
Jewish community in Colombia.”
Petro has refused to back down despite concerted pressure from
Israel, the US, the Jewish community and Colombia’s political and media
establishment. Last week, the US “strongly condemn[ed]” President
Petro’s statements and “call[ed] on him to condemn Hamas, a designated
terrorist organization, for its barbaric murder of Israeli men, women
and children,” all to no avail: Petro continues to lambast Israel while
refusing to condemn Hamas.
On Saturday, he even stated that “Hamas was created by Mossad to
divide the Palestinian people and have an excuse to punish them” — a
claim that was widely ridiculed by Colombian media and politicians
despite having more than a grain of truth to it. As the Wall Street Journal reported in its 2009 article, How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas,
“Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged [Hamas] as a
counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation
Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah.”
In 2019, Netanyahu himself told his fellow Likud members in the Knesset:
Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a
Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money
to Hamas.
The Israeli ambassador, Dagan, responded to Petro’s tweet with a
sarcastic jibe that partly backfired — at least among those aware of the
role Israel has played in arming and training Colombia’s paramilitary
groups (more on that later):
It is true, Mr. President Gustavo Petro, as you wrote
in this tweet, indeed #Hamas is an invention of the Mossad. However, I
would like to share additional information with you from our
intelligence services, which are among the best in the world: The Elders
of Zion founded the Clan del Golfo. There are still Jews, with large,
aquiline noses, who command the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia.
Tel Aviv’s next step was to suspend all “security exports” to
Colombia in response to its president’s “anti-Semitic” statements.
Outside of the US, Israel is the Colombian military’s main weapons
supplier. But if the move was supposed to bring Petro back into line, it
had, if anything, the opposite effect. Petro’s immediate response
was the following statement (translation and comments in parenthesis by
yours truly), which includes accusations of Israeli involvement in
atrocities during Colombia’s dirty wars:
If we have to suspend foreign relations with Israel, we will suspend them. We do not support genocides.
You do not insult the Colombian president.
I call on Latin America to show real solidarity with Colombia. And if
it is not capable, it will be history that will have the last word, as
it did in the great Chaco war.
Neither the Yair Kleins nor the Raifal Eithans (NC: two people we
will discuss later on) will be able to say what the history of peace in
Colombia is like. They unleashed massacres and genocide in Colombia.
To the people of Israel, I ask them to help bring about peace in Colombia and… in Palestine and the world.
That was on Sunday. On Monday, Petro followed through with his threat
— though it was Colombia’s foreign minister, Álvaro Leyva Durán, who
actually carried it out, albeit not very smoothly or for very long.
X Diplomacy
After posting a tweet
lambasting the Israeli ambassador for his “mindless boorishness” toward
Colombia’s president, Leyva Durán suggested that Dagan should
“apologise and leave”. Within minutes, the story had gone viral:
Colombia, until recently widely considered the “Israel of South
America,” had expelled Israel’s ambassador. An hour later, Leyva Durán
tweeted: “No sensible person can applaud this scorched earth policy no
matter where it comes from. It violates the dignity of the human person.
Kills innocents.”
But two hours later, the foreign minister pulled a bizarre 180 degree
turn, stating, again on Twitter/X, that he had not actually ordered
Dagan’s expulsion after all but was instead merely insisting that
respect be shown for Colombia’s president. An hour later, he tweeted:
“Relations with Israel will be maintained if this country so wishes. Our
constitutional principles teach us and command us to respect
international law. Something that must be two-way. Respectful relations
between States will always be welcome.”
It was, if nothing else, an embarrassing illustration of the dangers
of conducting high-stakes international diplomacy on social media
platforms. It is not clear why the Petro government made such a dramatic
climbdown — and what’s more, on the most public of global stages — but I
will try to hazard a guess.
We ask our partner that, as the Government of Spain, we bring Netanyahu before the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Here is my official statement 👇 pic.twitter.com/Wuu8nnKfVp
el pais | The Israeli Embassy in Spain issued a statement on Monday afternoon in which it strongly condemns the recent statements of some members of the Spanish Government,
without specifying any name or political formation, and calls on the
current president, Pedro Sánchez, to unequivocally denounce and condemn
what he considers "shameful," according to the note. Shortly before nine
o'clock in the evening, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded with a
strong statement in which it categorically rejects the falsehoods
poured in the communiqué of the Israeli Embassy about some of its
members and does not accept unfounded insinuations about them.
In
its note, the Israeli diplomatic legation describes as deeply worrying
that, at a time when Israel is mourning - for the loss of innocent lives
in the barbaric Hamas attack on 7 October, when more than 150
civilians, including children, women and the elderly remain captive to
Hamas terrorists in Gaza, certain elements within the Spanish Government
have chosen to align themselves with this ISIS-type terrorism, in
reference to the Islamic State. These statements are not only absolutely
immoral, but also endanger the security of the Jewish communities of
Spain, exposing them to the risk of a greater number of anti-Semitic
incidents and attacks, the note from the Israeli Embassy adds. Both
Sumar, the formation led by Yolanda Díaz, and Podemos and the United
Left participated this Sunday in the demonstration that toured the center of Madrid
in solidarity with Palestine. Sumar has expressly condemned the attacks
on the civilian population committed by Hamas in Israel.
Ione Belarra, acting Minister of Social Rights and the only member of
the Executive who attended Sunday's march in support of the Palestinian
people, has responded on the social network X
[before Twitter]: "His government [in reference to Benjamin Netanyahu's
Executive] is carrying out war crimes in the Gaza Strip, massive
bombings, water and electricity cuts, no humanitarian aid is allowed in.
To denounce this genocide is not to align itself with Hamas, it is a
democratic obligation. Silence, complicity with terror. Belarra, also
secretary general of Podemos, asked the socialist part of the current
executive to work together to file a petition with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
to investigate the war crimes committed in Palestine by [Prime
Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu. For her part, Yolanda Díaz, second acting
vice president and leader of the Sumar platform, in which Podemos is
integrated, denounced last week the "Israeli
apartheid" against the Palestinian people, in addition to condemning
violence against civilians wherever it comes from. Díaz demonstrated in
this way during an event organized in Madrid by the group The Left of
the European Parliament.
For its part, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has responded forcefully to the communiqué of the Israeli Embassy.
Any political leader can freely express positions as a representative
of a political party in a full democracy such as Spain, the text
emphasizes. In any case, the position of the Government of Spain as a
whole with regard to the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas is
clear: sharp condemnation, demand for immediate and unconditional
release of hostages and recognition of Israel's right to defend itself
within the limits set by international law and international
humanitarian law, he adds. In order to leave no doubt, he riveted: Has
the Government as a whole repeatedly expressed the need to distinguish
the Palestinian population from the Hamas terrorist group, to protect
the civilian population in Gaza and the imperative need to maintain the
basic supplies essential for the well-being of that population. The
Government as a whole reiterates that the only viable solution to
achieving a situation of peace and stability in the region is the
two-State solution that coexists in peace and security, as endorsed by
the United Nations.
sputnik | Asked whether there should be a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, US President Joe Biden said in an interview for CBS that Israel has to go after Hamas and called them a “bunch of cowards.” “Israel is going after a group of people who have engaged in barbarism that is as consequential as the Holocaust. And so, I think Israel has to respond. They have to go after Hamas. Hamas is a bunch of cowards. They’re hiding behind the civilians,” Biden said. Gaza is a small, densely populated 140.9 square meter area with over 2 million people. Travel in and out of Gaza is heavily controlled by Israeli forces. Biden emphasized that Hamas needs to be “eliminated entirely.” Biden also said that he is in talks with Egypt and Israel about the establishment of a humanitarian corridor in the area.
“We’re also talking to Egyptians whether there is an outlet to get these children and women out of that area at this moment. But it’s hard,” Biden said in the interview. The US President also responded “yes” when asked if he supported humanitarian aid being sent to Gaza, something Israel has been blocking, including food, water and electricity, though Israel announced on Sunday that some water services had been turned back on. At least 13 Americans have been missing since Hamas’ attack, and 30 Americans have been confirmed dead. Biden said that the US is trying every avenue they have to see its remaining citizens returned safely but would not provide details. The interviewer noted that Biden had called the missing Americans’ families and spoke to them on Zoom.
While Biden consistently stressed throughout the interview that the United States supports Israel in their fight against Hamas, he suggested that they do not attempt to occupy Gaza. “I think it’d be a big mistake. Look, what happened in Gaza, in my view, Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people. And I think that … It would be a mistake … for Israel to occupy … Gaza again,” Biden said. Biden added that he does not think committing American troops will be necessary in the conflict. The President stressed that he still supports a two-state solution in the area, which has long been the official US policy, but said that right now is not the time to press for it. He also said that the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia is not dead because of the conflict. “The Saudis, and the Emiratis, and other Arab nations understand that their security and stability is enhanced if there’s normalization of relations with Israel,” Biden said. “It’s just going to take time to get done.”
Biden also addressed the conflict in Ukraine, saying that the United States can handle both it and Israel at the same time. “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history– not in the world, in the history of the world. The history of the world. We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.” The United States has provided at least $111 billion to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s special operation. Earlier this month, an additional $24 billion in aid was blocked by a group of House Republicans. That debate resulted in the ousting of House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Congress is now frozen until a new speaker is elected. The White House has continued to ask Congress for aid for both Ukraine and Israel. When asked if the situation in Congress threatens world security, Biden responded “yes,” putting the blame on “MAGA Republicans.”
military | Within hours of the horrific attack by Hamas, the U.S. began moving warships and aircraft to the region to be ready to provide Israel with whatever it needed to respond.
A second U.S. carrier strike group departs from Norfolk, Virginia, on
Friday. Scores of aircraft are heading to U.S. military bases around
the Middle East. Special operations forces are now assisting Israel's
military in planning and intelligence. The first shipment of additional
munitions has already arrived.
More is expected, soon. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will arrive in
Israel Friday to meet with Israeli leaders to discuss what else the U.S.
can provide.
For now, the buildup reflects U.S. concern that the deadly fighting
between Hamas and Israel could escalate into a more dangerous regional
conflict. So the primary mission for those ships and warplanes is to
establish a force presence that deters Hezbollah, Iran or others from
taking advantage of the situation. But the forces the U.S. sends are
capable of more than that.
Into the valley of death sailed the 10,000, aboard aircraft carriers Ford and Eisenhower – sitting ducks for swarming drones & other weaponry not dreamed of by those who made short work of the Charge of the Light Brigade. Perhaps Blinken/Nuland/Austin want that? Or are just dumb?
A look at what weapons and options the U.S. military could provide:
WEAPONS AND SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES
The U.S. is providing some personnel and much-needed munitions to
Israel. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that a small special
operations cell was now assisting Israel with intelligence and planning,
and providing advice and consultations to the Israeli Defense Forces on
hostage recovery efforts. Those forces, however, have not been tasked
with hostage rescue, which would put them on the ground fighting in the
conflict. That's something the Biden administration has not approved and
White House spokesman John Kirby has said the Israelis do not want.
The U.S. is also getting U.S. defense companies to expedite weapons
orders by Israel that were already on the books. Chief among those are
munitions for Israel's Iron Dome air defense system.
“We’re surging additional military assistance, including ammunition
and interceptors to replenish Iron Dome,” President Joe Biden said
Tuesday. “We’re going to make sure that Israel does not run out of these
critical assets to defend its cities and its citizens.”
Iron Dome’s missiles target rockets that approach its cities.
According to Raytheon, Israel has 10 such systems in place. Beginning
with Saturday's attack, Hamas has fired more than 5,000 rockets at
Israel, most of which the system has been able to intercept, according
to the Israel Defense Forces.
Raytheon produces most of the missile components for Iron Dome in the U.S., and the Army has two systems in its stockpile.
The Iron Dome munitions the U.S. provides to Israel will likely be
above and beyond what Israel has ordered and will be part of ongoing
military assistance packages. Those packages will also include small
diameter bombs and JDAM kits — essentially a tail fin and navigation kit
that turns a “dumb” bomb into a “smart” bomb and enables troops to
guide the munition to a target, rather than simply dropping it.
NAVY SHIPS AND PLANES
One of the most visible examples of the U.S. response was the
announcement just hours after the attacks that the Pentagon would
redirect the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group
to sail toward Israel. The carrier had just completed an exercise with
the Italian Navy when the ship with its crew of about 5,000 was ordered
to quickly sail to the Eastern Mediterranean.
One week after the attacks, as Israel positioned for a major ground
offensive into Gaza City, Austin announced a second carrier group would
be sailing toward Israel, as he ordered the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower
carrier strike group to join the Ford in the Eastern Mediterranean. In a
statement announcing the move, Austin said he was sending the
Eisenhower too “as part of our effort to deter hostile actions against
Israel or any efforts toward widening this war following Hamas’s attack
on Israel.”
The carriers provide a host of options. They serve as primary command
and control operations centers and can conduct information warfare.
They can launch and recover E2-Hawkeye surveillance planes, recognizable
by their 24-foot (7-meter) diameter disc-shaped radars. The planes
provide early warnings on missile launches, conduct surveillance and
manage the airspace, not only detecting enemy aircraft but also
directing U.S. movements.
They also serve as a floating airbase for F-18 fighter jets that can
fly intercepts or strike targets. And the carriers can flex to provide
significant capabilities for humanitarian work, including onboard
hospitals with ICUs, emergency rooms, medics, surgeons and doctors. They
also sail with helicopters that can be used to airlift critical
supplies in or victims out.
The Eisenhower had already been scheduled to deploy to the
Mediterranean on a regular rotation, and the Ford is near the end of its
scheduled deployment. But the Biden administration for now has decided
to have both carriers there.
AIR FORCE WARPLANES
The Pentagon has also ordered additional warplanes to bolster A-10,
F-15 and F-16 squadrons at bases throughout the Middle East. More are to
be added if needed.
scottritterextra | I arrived late to the Palestinian cause. I was too wrapped up in the
Israeli saga, too invested in the Israeli fantasy, to see the forest for
the trees. I was too busy hating Hamas to realize that I should instead
be hating that which enabled Hamas to carry out the crimes it has
committed for the past four decades.
Simply put, I was blind to the tragedy of the Palestinian people.
Today
I know that the only true victims in the Israeli saga (outside the
children from every walk of life who are caught up in the tragic events
foisted upon them by adults who claim to be working for a bright and
shiny tomorrow, but only deliver death and destruction) are the
Palestinian people.
At least Israel’s founding fathers were honest enough to acknowledge this.
The
Zionists of today lack the moral character to admit that Israel can
only be built and sustained at the cost of a viable, free, and
independent Palestine, that Israel will never allow such a Palestine to
exist, and that if there is a Zionist Israel, there will never be an
independent Palestine.
The sins of the fathers are real,
especially when it comes to Israel’s founding fathers and the crimes
they committed against the Palestinian people. Moshe Dyan admitted this
much. So, too, did David Ben Gurion. These were men—fundamentally flawed
in their ideologies and motivations, but honestly so.
Benjamin
Netanyahu and his fellow modern-day Israeli politicians, regardless of
political affiliation, have no such integrity. They are inveterate
liars, men and women who will promise one thing, then do another, when
it comes to the future of Palestine, all the while leading Israel down
the path of permanent war.
I arrived late to the Palestinian
cause, but now that I am here, I can say this—the best way to defeat
both Hamas and Zionist Israel is to support a free and independent
Palestinian state.
I have never stood with Hamas, and I never will.
I once stood with Israel, but I will never do so again.
For
four decades now, the Israeli-Hamas collusion has run its tragic
course, each side proclaiming its desire to destroy the other, and yet
each side knowing the awful truth—that one cannot exist without the
other.
The Israeli-Palestine problem has become a never-ending
cycle of violence which feeds off the pain and suffering of the
Palestinian people. It is time to bring this cycle to an end.
From
this moment forward, I will always stand with the people of Palestine,
convinced that the only path for peace in the Middle East is one that
leads through a viable Palestinian homeland, its capital firmly and
forever ensconced in East Jerusalem.
In this way, Hamas will be
disenfranchised as a terrorist organization—a legitimate Palestinian
state takes away the perpetual state of conflict Hamas contributes to, a
status which is justified by the pursuit of a legitimate Palestinian
state Zionist Israel will never allow to exist.
A legitimate
Palestinian state delegitimizes the notion of a Zionist Israeli entity
which, by definition, can only exist by the perpetual exploitation of
the Palestinian people. Benjamin Netanyahu was able to sustain the
modern-day version of the Zionist Israeli state by generating fear
through the endless cycle of Hamas-driven violence.
Remove the
threat posed by Hamas, and Zionist Israel no longer will be able to
blind the citizens of Israel and the world to the apartheid-like reality
of the present-day Israeli existence. Basic humanity will compel
Zionist Israel to shed its Zionist ideology, just as apartheid South
Africa shed its ugly legacy of White supremacy. Post-Zionist Israel will
be compelled by necessity to learn to coexist with its non-Jewish
neighbors peacefully and prosperously, not as a colonial apartheid
state, but as equal partners in the experiment of life that will have
collectively seized the people who call the Holy Land home.
al-mayadeen | Operation Al-Aqsa Flood has caught
"Israel" and the US by complete surprise. Americans are calling it
‘Israel’s Pearl Harbour’ moment --and an attack on America too). Nikki
Haley (running for election) is succinct: To Netanyahu: “Finish them”.
Al-Aqsa Flood is held to be "Israel’s"
greatest ‘intelligence failure’. Maybe so, but if Israeli and American
intelligence did not see the attack coming, it is because of their
Western mechanical, literal way of thinking. If I, and probably
thousands of Al Mayadeen readers, broadly knew that this was in the works (but not of course, of its operational details), why was "Israel" blind to it?
The writing was clearly written on the
wall. Two years ago, a missile campaign was unleashed from Gaza on "Tel
Aviv" in response to the Temple Mount Movement’s religious zealotry and
invasion of Al-Aqsa mosque.
Palestinians rallied to the call to
safeguard the Holy Mosque. It was not just Hamas; it was West Bank
Palestinians and (for the first time, too, 1948 Palestinians who have
Israeli passports) who all rose up to protect Al-Aqsa. Just to be clear,
the rallying cry was not for Hamas; it was not for Palestinian
nationalism. It was for Al-Aqsa -- an icon that goes to the heart of
what it is to be Muslim (Sunni or Shi’a). It was a cry that resonated
across the entire Islamic sphere.
Did the West not get it? Apparently
not. It was right under their nose, but super high-tech Intel doesn’t do
symbolic meaning. That was true for the 2006 Lebanon war too, by the
way; "Israel" could not grasp the symbolism of Hezballah’s ‘Karbala’
stand.
In the intervening period, "Israel" has
shattered into two equally weighted factions holding to two
irreconcilable visions of "Israel’s" future; two mutually opposing
readings of history and of what it means to be Jewish.
The fissure could not be more complete.
Except it is. One faction, which holds a majority in parliament, is
broadly Mizrahi -- a former underclass in Israeli society; and the
other, largely well-to-do liberal Ashkenazi.
So, what has this to do with Al-Aqsa
Flood? Well, the Right in Netanyahu’s government has two long-standing
commitments. One is to rebuild the (Jewish) Temple on ‘Temple Mount’
(Haram al-Shariff).
Just to be clear, that would entail demolishing Al-Aqsa.
The second overriding commitment is to
the founding of "Israel", on the "Land of Israel". And again, to be
clear, this (in their view) would entail clearing Palestinians from the
West Bank. Indeed, the settlers have been cleansing Palestinians from swaths of the West Bank over the past year (notably between Ramallah and Jehrico).
On Thursday morning (two days preceding
Al-Aqsa Flood), more than 800 settlers stormed the Mosque Compound,
under the full protection of Israeli forces. The drumbeat of such
provocations is rising.
This is nothing new. The First Intifada
was triggered by (then) PM Sharon making a provocative visit into the
mosque. I was a part of Senator George Mitchell’s Presidential Committee
investigating that incident. Even then, it was clear that Sharon
intended the visit to fuel the fire of Religious nationalism. At that
time, the Temple Mount Movement was a minnow; today it has ministers in
Cabinet and in key security positions -- and has promised its followers
to build the ‘Third Temple’.
So, the threat to Al-Aqsa has been
building for two decades, and today is reaching an apex. And yet US and
Israeli intelligence didn’t see resistance coming, and nor did they see
the settler violence building in the West Bank?
What happened on Saturday was widely expected and clearly extensively planned. So what’s next?
IndianPunchline | The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s press conference
on Thursday concluding his visit to Israel conveyed three things. One,
the Biden Administration will be seen as backing Israel to the hilt by
way of meeting its security needs but Washington will not be drawn into
the forthcoming Gaza operations except to arrange exit routes in the
south for hapless civilians fleeing the conflict zone.
Two, Washington’s top priority at the moment is on engaging with the regional states
who wield influence with Hamas to negotiate the hostage issue. Fourteen
US citizens in Israel remain unaccounted for. (White House confirmed
that the death toll in the fighting now includes at least 27 Americans.)
Three,
the US will coordinate with the regional states to prevent any
escalation in the situation to widen the conflict on the part of
Hezbollah. Although the US cannot and will not stop Israeli leadership
on its tracks apropos the imminent Gaza operation, it remains
unconvinced.
Blinken was non-committal about any direct US military involvement, and the chances are slim as things stand.Most
important, even as Blinken could hear the war drums, he also cast his
eye on a future for Israel (and the region) where it will be at peace
with itself, would integrate into the region and concentrate on creating
economic prosperity — metaphorically put, beating its swords into
plowshares in a Biblical Messianic intent.
That
is to say, despite the massive show of force off the waters of Israel,
with the deployment of two aircraft carriers along with destroyers and
other naval assets and fighter jets off the waters of Israel, the Biden
Administration is profoundly uneasy about any escalation of the conflict
into a wider war. If the US senses that this is a catastrophe that Israel allowed to happen, that remains a strictly private thought.
Even
as Blinken was heading for Tel Aviv, US House Foreign Affairs Committee
Chairman Michael McCaul told reporters in Washington on Wednesday
following a closed-door intelligence briefing that “We know that Egypt
has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could
happen. I don’t want to get too much into classified, but a warning was
given. I think the question was at what level.”
Shortly after
McCaul spoke to reporters in Washington, an anonymous Egyptian official
confirmed to the Times of Israel that Cairo’s agents did warn their
Israeli counterparts about a planned Hamas attack, but that this warning
may not have made it to Netanyahu’s office.
These
disclosures would embarrass the Israeli government, as Saturday’s
surprise attack can be viewed as a catastrophic failure for Israel’s
intelligence services. In a brutally frank statement
on Thursday, the Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces
General Herzi Halevi admitted, “The IDF is responsible for the security
of our nation and its citizens, and we failed to do so on Saturday
morning. We will look into it, we will investigate, but now it is time
for war.”
This
failure will impact the decision-making in Tel Aviv. Gen. Halevi
described Hamas as “animals” and “merciless terrorists who have
committed unimaginable acts” against men, women and children. He said
that the IDF “understands the magnitude of this time, and the magnitude
of the mission that lays on our shoulders.”
“Yahya Sinwar, the
ruler of the Gaza Strip, decided on this horrible attack, and therefore
he and the entire system under him are dead men,” the general added,
vowing to “attack them and dismantle them and their organisation” and
that “Gaza will not look the same” afterward.
So, it's been months since Disqus would function normally when/if you clicked on a post. Comments which haven't been abundant since the heyday a decade ago have since utterly died. This morning I finally rolled up my sleeves and manually reinserted disqus into the old-fangled site html and it should now be functioning normally in all formats and all browsers including mobile. Didn't wind up losing anything so I'll count it a win.
Hopefully, with the world about to burst into flames - diehards will have a thing or two to say about a thing or two over the next few days.
nikkei | Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has blamed the rapidly worsening
conflict in the Middle East on a lack of justice for the Palestinian
people, days after the militant group Hamas carried out a deadly assault
on Israeli territory.
"The crux of the issue lies in the fact
that justice has not been done to the Palestinian people," Beijing's top
diplomat said in a phone call with Brazil's Celso Amorim, a former
foreign minister and now a special adviser to Brazilian President Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva. A statement on the call was released by Wang's
ministry.
The call came just ahead of an emergency meeting of the
U.N. Security Council on Friday to discuss the Israel-Hamas war. Brazil,
a nonpermanent member, is chairing the council this month.
Wang
urged all parties in the Middle East to exercise restraint to prevent
further escalation. He added that the United Nations has a
responsibility and duty to play a role in the Palestinian issue, and
China is ready to cooperate closely with various parties, including
Brazil.
Amid an outpouring of Western support for Israel after
Hamas' weekend onslaught killed over 1,300 people, Beijing has
maintained a relatively neutral position, lamenting civilian casualties
but not condemning Hamas. Soon after the initial attack, it called for
an immediate cease-fire and repeated its support for a two-state
solution that would create an independent Palestinian homeland.
But
the comment by Wang on how China sees the root cause of the problem
appeared to mark a hardening of its stance amid heavy Israeli airstrikes
on Gaza and talk of a possible ground operation to dislodge Hamas,
which controls the strip.
Earlier this year, China positioned itself as a potential mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, as it seeks to become a more influential player in the region.
citypaperbogota | “What you are saying is an insult to the six million victims of the
Holocaust and to the Jewish People. Your comments here (on “X”), and
others on your page completely ignore the hundreds of dead and kidnapped
during Hamas’ murderous attack on Israeli civilians. This post is a
shame to you and your country. A world leader should do better,” stated
the World Jewish Congress, on Tuesday, to Colombian President Gustavo
Petro.
In the realm of political irresponsibility and moral bankruptcy,
Colombia’s Gustavo Petro’s recent comments stand out as a glaring
example of a leader who has not only lost his way, but political
accountability. His crude comparison of Gaza to Auschwitz, the Nazi
concentration camp where millions of innocent people were systematically
murdered, is nothing short of grotesque.
As most recently reported in The Times of Israel, and many other
prestigious media outlets, Petro’s remarks have not only drawn
condemnation from Jewish organizations but have exposed his woeful
ignorance about history, diplomacy, and human suffering. The World
Jewish Congress’s statement, directed at President Petro, is a stark
reminder of the gravity of his statements.
Petro’s troubling statements began with a series of pro-Palestinian
messages on “X” in which he prominently displayed at the top of his
profile a collage of photos of Palestinian children, whom he claims were
“murdered by the illegal occupation of their territory.” This collage
posted on the same day Israelis were being murdered in the street, in
their homes and at an outdoor music festival, shows a shocking lack of
empathy for Israelis, or the citizens of any other nation that could be
attacked on such a massive, inhumane, scale.
When Israel’s Ambassador to Colombia, Gali Dagan, cordially expected
Petro to condemn Hamas up to 48 hours after Saturday’s horrific attacks,
Petro’s response was nothing short of astonishing. His reply,
“Terrorism is killing innocent children, whether in Colombia or
Palestine,” is a disturbing failure to differentiate between the actions
of a terrorist organization and a democratic state’s efforts to protect
its citizens. Petro’s tweet was posted as an estimated 150 Israelis,
Americans, Canadians, Italians, even a Colombian couple, ranging in age
from toddlers to the elderly, were taken hostage by Hamas.
The Confederación de Comunidades Judías de Colombia, Colombia’s
Jewish communal organization, issued a robust statement condemning
Petro’s comments. The statement rightly pointed out that the vast
majority of democracies around the world, including those led by
progressive and democratic forces, had unequivocally condemned the
aggression against Israel. Petro’s incoherent stance put him in stark
contrast with his global counterparts. Petro’s incoherence also put him
in stark contrast to other Latin American leaders, among them, Chile’s
Boric and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva, who categorically
condemned the mass terrorist attack on Israel – one that has claimed
more than 900 lives.
But Petro’s rhetoric didn’t stop with his verbose, self-aggrandizing
remarks. He went on to claim that Gaza is being “converted into a
concentration camp,” statement that reeks of historical ignorance and
offensive hyperbole. His analogy between the situation in Gaza and Nazi
concentration camps is not only historically inaccurate but deeply
offensive to the memory of Holocaust victims and survivors.
The World Jewish Congress’s words highlight the extent of Petro’s
biased historical rewrites. To invoke the Holocaust, an unparalleled
symbol of human suffering and evil, in the context of a contemporary
political dispute is not only insensitive but also reprehensible. It
reflects a dangerous disregard for history and an alarming willingness
to exploit the past for political protagonism.
In a challenging moment with the international community paying
tribute to the victims of the indiscriminate slaughter of Israelis – and
many foreign nationals – Gustavo Petro has embraced inflammatory
rhetoric, rejected moral clarity, and tarnished the reputation of
Colombia, at home and around the world. The country’s “progressive”
leader appears also willing to weaken his country’s relationship with
Israel, a long-standing friend and ally, to salvage misguided statements
and his social media platform.
Among the most stinging rebukes of Petro’s social media postings came
from the prominent Israeli politician Dani Dayan and chairman of Yad
Vashem – the memorial and museum in Israel dedicated to the memory of
the Holocaust. “President Gustavo Petro, as President of Yad Vashem, I
can affirm that you did not understand anything you saw in Auschwitz or
denied seeing it. You have the ignominious distinction of being the only
world leader, outside of Iran, to trivialize and deny the Holocaust in
such a manner.”
On Tuesday, social media feeds in Colombia erupted with the hashtag
#VergüenzaMundial (#WorldShame), reflection of the outrage Petro has
ignited among his fellow citizens. His shameful statements are not just a
stain on the country’s democratic integrity, but a perilous course that
threatens to cast Colombia alongside pariah states such as Iran and
Venezuela.
Adding to the gravity of the situation, on Saturday, vandals defaced
the entrance to the Israeli Embassy in Bogotá with swastikas, a Jewish
star and “terror” written in Hebrew. The words “Jerusalem is the capital
of Palestine,” “Arafat lives” and “Free Palestine” were also graffitied
along the Embassy’s white columns. Ambassador Dagan, in a caustic
statement on social media, referenced the vandalism, stating: “Look at
‘the solidarity’ we receive below at our [Embassy] installations.” Petro
also failed to condemn this hateful act, further highlighting his
indifference to antisemitism and intolerance.
Petro’s tweets are not a diplomatic blunder; they are a slap in the
face to the people of Israel who have endured decades of conflict and
terrorism. They are also a disservice to the countless innocent victims
of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Should Israel determine that it will no longer maintain diplomatic
relations with Colombia, it would be in its right to do so, especially
after Petro likened the Israeli military to Nazis in a tweet directed at
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. “Concentration camps are
prohibited by international law and those who develop them become
criminals against humanity,” stated Petro as Gallant explained the
extent of military’s operation against Hamas.
Petro’s repeated insults to the memory of the Holocaust is a betrayal
of the universal values the international community must uphold.
Failure to do so should generate strong condemnation from Colombia’s
closest allies, among them the U.S, Spain, Canada, United Kingdom,
Italy, Germany, France, but hopefully, remembering that the vast
majority of Colombians do uphold the universal values of respect and
human decency.
thegrayzone |After an Israeli reserve soldier named David Ben Zion told a
reporter Palestinian militants “cut [off] heads of babies,” Biden,
Netanyahu, and the international media amplified the dubious claim.
The Grayzone has identified Ben Zion as a fanatical settler leader
who incited riots by demanding a Palestinian town be “wiped out.”
An international outcry erupted when
Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced that Palestinian militants from the
besieged Gaza Strip had killed 40 “babies,” and beheaded several of them
during an incursion into Kfar Aza, a kibbutz on the Gaza border.
President Joseph Biden repeated the inflammatory claim during an October
10 White House Rose Garden address, while networks across the West carried the story without a shred of critical scrutiny.
According to CNN correspondent Nic Robertson, apparently citing Israeli military sources, Palestinian militants carried out, “ISIS-style executions,” in which they were “cutting the heads off of people,” including babies and pets.
The Grayzone has now identified a key
source of the claim that Palestinian militants beheaded Israeli babies.
He is David Ben Zion, a Deputy Commander of Unit 71 of the Israeli army
who also happens to be an extremist settler leader who incited violent
riots against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank earlier this year.
In an October 10 interview
with reporter Nicole Zedek of the Israeli state-sponsored i24 network,
Ben Zion stated, “We walked door to door, we killed a lot of terrorists.
They are very bad. They cut heads of children, they cut heads of women.
But we are stronger than them.”
He added, “We know that they are animals,” referring to Palestinians, “but we found that they don’t have any heart.”
Hours after his interview with i24,
still in the village of Kfar Aza, a uniformed Ben Zion could be seen
repeatedly grinning ear-to-ear in a video posted to his Facebook – an odd disposition for a supposed witness to the methodical butchering of babies.
Earlier that day, i24’s Zedek declared during a live report from Kfar Aza, “About
40 babies were taken out on gurneys… Cribs overturned, strollers left
behind, doors left wide open.’” Zedek’s report has been viewed tens of millions of times on Twitter and promoted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry – which underwrites her network.
Hours later, she qualified
her statement, stating, “Soldiers told me they believe 40
babies/children were killed. The exact death toll is still unknown as
the military continues to go house to house and find more Israeli
casualties.”
Yet the unverified tale quickly made
its way to the highest levels of leadership, as if by design. Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman stated unequivocally that babies
and toddlers were found with their “heads decapitated,” while President
Joe Biden himself vaguely gestured towards “stomach-churning reports of
babies being killed.”
Likewise, cable news has flown into a frenzy, breathlessly reporting the story despite the IDF walking back its initial confirmation.
Meanwhile, some reporters who initially carried the official Israeli allegations about beheaded babies began issuing qualifications of their own.
Oren Ziv, an Israeli reporter who joined the military’s official tour of Kfar Aza, commented on Twitter,
“I’m getting a lot of question about the reports of ‘Hamas beheaded
babies’ that were published after the media tour in the village. During
the tour we didn’t see any evidence of this, and the army spokesperson
or commanders also didn’t mention any such incidents.”
theatlantic | Hamas’s surprise attack on
Israel has laid bare an uncomfortable truth: The fearsome reputation of
the Israeli military, like that of Israeli intelligence services, may be
overdue for a revision.
Israel
has an excellent air force and elite special-operations units, but its
conventional line units—made up mostly of conscripts—are neither
particularly well trained nor well disciplined by American standards.
These units are still demonstrably superior to those of Israel’s
adversaries from wars gone by, such as Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. But
today Israel faces highly disciplined and motivated nonstate foes in
southern Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, and its military does
not seem to have a clear advantage over them at the unit level.
The
United States provides Israel roughly $3.8 billion a year in military
assistance. (Last year, only Ukraine received more.) That money allows
Israel to purchase expensive weaponry, such as F-35 aircraft, that it
would otherwise struggle to afford. The two countries review and agree
on the amount of aid every 10 years; when we signed our most recent
memorandum of understanding with Israel, in 2016, I was the Pentagon’s
senior representative, taking part in several months of negotiations in
Washington, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. I had a chance to look under the
hood of the Israeli military, and I came away hugely impressed with the
Israeli officers with whom I worked. But I was also frankly worried
about what the next war might look like.
Even
then, Israeli military officials knew that the country was vulnerable
to infiltration operations, such as the one Hamas has just executed.
They judged Hezbollah likely to consider such tactics in any new clash.
Hamas itself had pulled off a similar operation in 2006, albeit on a
much smaller scale, when it kidnapped the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit,
whom it held captive for more than five years. Israel knew that more of
these kinds of attacks were coming, and yet somehow, it was caught
completely off guard when they did.
The
intelligence failure—which you can be sure Israelis will carefully
review—does not surprise me. Few Americans fully appreciate the trauma
that the Second Intifada, from 2000 to 2005, left behind. Israelis built
walls, both physical and mental, between themselves and their Arab
neighbors. I remember asking multiple Israelis in Jerusalem for
directions to Ramallah, a Palestinian city roughly 12 miles away, in
2009. None of them had any idea how to get there. The Palestinians were
both out of sight and out of mind, and after the ordeal of the preceding
years, that was precisely where many Israelis wanted them. But the
Palestinians never actually went anywhere. This lack of intimacy,
together with Hamas’s expulsion of other Palestinian factions from Gaza
in 2007, has surely hindered Israel’s ability to understand what is
going on inside Gaza.
More
worrying, and more structural, are the complacency and lack of
discipline that not only cost Israel in the opening stages of this new
war but will likely continue to do so. I spent almost three years in
Lebanon in the mid-2000s and wrote a doctoral dissertation on
Hezbollah’s evolution as a fighting force. The few Hezbollah fighters I
met in those days struck me, for the most part, as motivated, well
trained, and disciplined. Those who fought in the 2006 war with Israel
retained a certain amount of wary respect for the U.S. military but held
their Israeli adversaries in contempt. They had seen Israeli soldiers
in action—and had not been impressed.
Israel does an excellent job—arguably better than the U.S. military—of learning from its tactical and operational failures.
But the country’s semiprofessional military relies heavily on
conscripts and reservists, which places it at a disadvantage in many
respects. Full-time, professional militaries can dedicate themselves to
rehearsing collective tasks that high-intensity combat situations often
require: reacting to ambushes, conducting raids, incorporating artillery
and airpower into maneuvers. Conscript militaries, by contrast, are
forever bringing on and training new people. The turnover is often too
high to allow units to develop proficiency in the most complicated
military tasks.
Israel’s
conventional forces, moreover, seem to spend less time rehearsing
combined arms operations than they do policing the occupied territories.
Indeed, what few active-duty battalions Israel has appear to have been
deployed away from the south and to the West Bank to safeguard settlers
during the holiday. Such policing operations, in addition to pulling
needed units away from other priorities, are poor practice for more
high-intensity combat.
Many
Israelis in uniform look unkempt and even slovenly, which can be
somewhat charming—the contrast with, say, a U.S. Marine can be stark—but
the closer one looks, the more one wonders if such appearances betray a
certain nonchalance about the profession of arms. In nearly every war
Israel has fought since 1967—1973 and 2006 come most immediately to
mind—Israel’s armed forces have been slow out of the starting blocks.
Discipline is another issue: In 2006, Hezbollah was able to locate
Israeli positions by intercepting Israeli reservists calling home on
their mobile phones.
johnhelmer.net | In the first direct Russian warning
to the US Navy force in the Eastern Mediterranean, Zakharova added:
“So far we see that the situation is developing along the path of
escalation. There is a great risk of involving third forces in this
conflict. And this is fraught with long-term consequences for the region
and for the world.”
Putin followed in the evening on the telephone with the Turkish
President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “The need for an immediate ceasefire by
both sides and the resumption of the negotiation process was
emphasised,” according to the Kremlin’s communiqué.
“Mutual readiness to actively contribute to this was expressed…Separate
issues of Russian-Turkish cooperation in various fields were also
touched upon.”
Erdogan’s press release
was more revealing. He and Putin had “touched upon what initiatives can
be taken to meet humanitarian needs in the region, as the Turkish
president told Putin that targeting civilian settlements is worrying and
Türkiye does not welcome such move.” Erdogan’s twitter announcement
adds: “President Erdoğan and President Putin of Russia also exchanged
views on potential initiatives to meet humanitarian needs in the
region.”
This is a hint that Erdogan and Putin are contemplating a Turkish
ship convoy of aid to Gaza, protected from Israeli attack by the Russian
Navy from its Tartous base on the Syrian coast, and by the Russian Air
Force from Hmeimim. This humanitarian operation by sea would aim at
breaking the blockade of the coast by the Israelis, and running the
gauntlet of the USS Gerald Ford and its squadron further offshore. If this operation, a reminder of the Gaza Flotilla of 2010,
is in planning now – the open signals are warning Washington and the
US Navy to expect it – then the confrontation, and the risk to the US
and Israel of strategic defeat at sea, are unprecedented.
The planning of Russian military protection of seaborne humanitarian aid convoys to the Gaza also extends to Egypt.
This was touched on in the conversation which Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry had with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. That was followed by Egyptian press disclosure
of Israeli warnings, following by bombings, to stop Egyptian trucks
delivering aid into Gaza across the Rafah land bridge at the southern
end of Gaza.
An alternative Egyptian option is a naval convoy. If this will be
coordinated through the Kremlin and the Russian Defense Ministry with an
Erdogan-Putin plan of a Turkish convoy sailing from the north, the
escalation to regional and superpower level will have materialised
before the Israeli invasion of Gaza can preempt it.
The Russian Defense Ministry has not been silent towards Israel in
the past. Since the ambush by the Israel Air Force of the Russian Il-20
surveillance aircraft, and the killing of its 15-man crew in September
2018, the General Staff has said it has been reserving its moves against the Israelis while identifying them as the enemy.
Vzglyad, the Moscow platform for Russian military and security thinking, editorialised on April 17, 2023,
that in siding with the Ukraine during the Special Military Operation,
the Israeli government had become Russia’s adversary: “The time has come
to take a new position on the Palestinian issue. To take the
celebration of Al-Quds Day to a new level, as well as to take a more
pro-Palestinian position in the Middle East conflict. To stand on the
side of those who help Russia within the framework of their own
interests (Iran, Saudi Arabia) against those who help our enemies. And
thereby to send a very clear signal to the world – a signal that Russia
will treat its partners exactly as they treat it. To help supporters –
and not to act in the interests of opponents.”
The creation of a humanitarian corridor was explicitly mentioned in the Foreign Ministry briefing on Tuesday. “Tensions
are rising in the West Bank of the Jordan River. There are high risks
of the conflict spreading to the area of the Lebanese-Israeli border and
drawing new parties into it. A large-scale humanitarian catastrophe is
unfolding before our eyes. The main thing now is to cease fire and stop
the bloodshed. We support the efforts of interested parties aimed at
solving this priority task. This would make it possible to avoid new
victims, end the suffering of the civilian population, ensure its
evacuation through humanitarian corridors and prevent the situation from
sliding into a region-wide humanitarian catastrophe. This is not just a
crisis or an emergency. We are talking about the fate of millions of
people.”
Spokesman Zakharova also struck at the CIA and the Pentagon for their
surprise defeat by Hamas. “How did it happen that in a year; that’s how
much time the operation was being prepared for, then carried out now in
a few days, the United States as Israel’s closest ally did not warn
about this? They have satellites everywhere, appropriate tracking
devices, military bases, including in the region. There are all the
possibilities to carry out, not just monitoring, but surveillance — the
facts speak for themselves — of all information circulating on
American-made equipment (hardware and software). For the whole year of
preparing such a large-scale operation, the United States with all the
power of its special services did not transmit anything to Israel as
intelligence…How did it happen that during the whole year of preparation
of the corresponding operation in the Middle East, the United States
did not transmit any information to its partners in Israel?”
By contrast, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said, “for two months at
the end of 2021 and two months at the beginning of 2022, the United
States at all levels told how Russia would ‘attack’ Ukraine. This was
done specifically to create an information backdrop in order to divert
the eyes of the whole world from how, for all these years, the United
States and their NATO colleagues (primarily the United Kingdom) have
been pumping Ukraine with weapons and creating the anti-Russia project,
an anti-Russian springboard…After the corresponding instruction from
Washington, a multiple increase in the shelling of Donbass by the regime
of V.A. Zelensky followed. Then, in late 2021-early 2022, the US ‘knew
everything’ and told everyone. But in the area of their direct
responsibility — the Middle East has always been one of them — in
relation to the closest ally over which the American protectorate is
carried out, the US special services, the State Department and the White
House did not transmit any information necessary for self-defence.”
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