Monday, March 11, 2024 6:03:06 PM
Inside Israel’s war
"Witnesses of Aid Convoy Violence Describe Shooting, Panic and Desperation"
----------
Related:
You have 5.2 million people or so, that have no civil or political rights in their own land.
How do you not call that apartheid?
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174017328
[...]How Israel Quietly Crushed Early American Jewish Dissent on Palestine
“Our Palestine Question,” an explosive new book by Geoffrey Levin, delves into American Jewish McCarthyism from the 1950s through late 1970s.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173965072
How an AP photographer made this image of Israeli female soldiers taking a selfie at the Gaza border
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173962873
[...]Why can't you answer my fucking question?
"tell me what your plan is to extend civil and political rights to the 5.2 million or so people you've conquered"
Maybe your acknowledged expert can answer it. He knows Israel is an apartheid state too. He knows you're genocidal filth... He just approves of it
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173927675
Shimon Peres doubts Israel can win Permanent war or Survive Annexation of West Bank
November, 2015 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=118223699
Smotrich at Knesset: Ben-Gurion should have ‘finished the job,’ thrown out Arabs
September, 2022 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170039047
Netanyahu’s Betrayal of Democracy Is a Betrayal of Israel
January, 2023 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170949384
The U.S.-Israel Relationship No Longer Makes Sense
April, 2023 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171638982
[thought March 11 2024 - unless it is to help/force the formation of an independent Palestinian state,
which also looks a forlorn hope yet the Palestinians are not going anywhere and the Zionists still
insist on Israel being a Jewish state. A bit like far-fight Christian zealots in the USA aggressively
insisting on America becoming a theocracy. It really is pretty much fucked up, eh. Thanks largely to
religion .. enough thought for now]
‘Unsafe in own home’: Israeli settlers spread terror in South Hebron Hills
"Israel's Supreme Court strikes down disputed law that limited court oversight
January, 2024 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173557366
Corrupted cowboys
[...]How Far Will Republicans Go To Bring America to Her Knees on Behalf of Putin & Trump?
[...]Russia’s battlefield, in other words, has now shifted from Ukraine to the US political system and our homes via radio, TV, and the internet, all in the hopes of ending US aid to the democracy they’ve brutally attacked.
P - And the momentum is following that shift: Russia is close to having the upper hand in Ukraine because of Putin’s ability — via Trump and Johnson — to get Republican politicians to mouth his talking points and propaganda.
P - Now, with Speaker “Moscow Mike” Johnson shutting down the House of Representatives so nobody can offer a discharge petition that would force a vote on Ukraine aid (and aid for Palestinian refugees, Taiwan, and our southern border), it’s becoming more and more clear that Vladimir Putin is running the Republican party via his well-paid stooge, Donald Trump.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173998216
brooklyn13, Fuck your - "It's really rather sad, if not pathetic, that you insist
on trying to conflate the WB murderous settlers with Israel as a whole."
No one here, including me, has ever made your conflation. Yet you keep repeating your asinine lie.
March, 2024 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173963629
brooklyn13, One, kind of vicious actually, sly and sleazy guy you are on the Israel question. Your
"In which he gives a shout out to our own resident pro-Hamas crowd:
"And Hamas’s fellow travelers and useful idiots in the West, most of them self-
described progressives, parrot that denialism.." (about the sexual violence)"
is as sleazy and dishonest as it gets.
How many times have you accused people here of being pro-Hamas as you did to None there.
You have not one ounce of evidence for that dishonest slur.
And every time you have made it here it has been emphatically and justly rejected.
Asshole.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173985611
What more to say about the Israel-Palestinian war which we haven't said repeatedly
before, except to observe and comment on new developments as they occur.
"Your reply to that article is WHAT ABOUT what Trump would have done?."
No, it wasn't only that. I also included
Grading Biden on the Israel-Hamas War
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173448365
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173960478
and all
Netanyahu doesn’t give a rip about Biden. He’ll do whatever he wants...
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173448397
Pentagon Releases First-Ever Policy on Civilian Harm Reduction
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173494669
2012 - Service to Israel Tugs at Identity of Arab Citizens
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173514232
The U.S. and Israel: An Embrace Shows Signs of Strain After Oct. 7
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173537773
Biden has been bad for Palestinians. Trump would be worse.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173961023
All here - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/replies.aspx?msg=173448365
March, 2024 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173963425
----------
IMAGE - [ video link https://mediacore-live-production.akamaized.net/video/01/rh/Z/n6.mp4 ]
Four Corners goes face-to-face with Israel’s powerful political and military voices.
By John Lyons — with Jonathan Miller, Mayeta Clark and Maddy King
Four Corners
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=australia+four+corners
Updated 11 Mar 2024, 9:49am
Published 11 Mar 2024, 5:50am
Ehud Barak says more than two decades ago he was new enough in Israeli politics to tell the truth.
He declared then that if he was a Palestinian, he’d probably be a terrorist.
That comment could have derailed a spectacular military and political career, but the former general chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) went on to become prime minister and defence minister.
Today, as the world holds its breath in anticipation of a ceasefire in Gaza, the former leader offers a frank assessment of Israeli intelligence.
He describes Hamas’s violent October 7 attack – in which about 1,200 people were killed and around 240 kidnapped – as “the worst failure of our intelligence and operational forces since the establishment of the state of Israel”.
But when I ask why the most powerful army in the Middle East has killed so many children in response (with more than 600 dying a week, on average), he replies:
“I don’t think that anyone made the deliberate decision
to kill children.”
The IDF is known for its targeted assassinations and Barak himself says he previously participated in, and ordered, several killings.
But, he notes, “I never deluded myself to believe that by killing any individual you solve the problem … it just delayed the real decision.
“Real decisions … are not about how to kill mosquitoes more effectively. It’s about how to drain the swamp.”
IMAGE - [ video link .. https://mediacore-live-production.akamaized.net/video/01/rh/Z/na.mp4 ]
Israel’s ferocious retaliation to October 7 has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead.
Gaza was already one of the most desperate places on Earth, and now vast sections are reduced to rubble with people facing starvation and disease.
Defenders of Israel’s conduct say such high civilian deaths have been inevitable because Hamas embeds itself in civilian communities and Gaza is such a densely populated area.
A Palestinian woman embraces the body of her five-year-old niece who was killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza. Reuters: Mohammed Salem
Ami Ayalon is among them, and he’s more blunt than Barak, dispensing with any diplomatic niceties.
“There was no war like this ever fought … the most populated battlefield ever fought in the history of wars,” he says.
Ayalon formerly ran Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, and says it’s “almost impossible to hit a military target without killing or hitting civilians. This is one reason”.
“The second reason, which is much more important, [is that] Hamas, deliberately, are using civilian targets; schools, hospitals … so Hamas is doing everything in order for us to kill or to use their people as a human shield.”
The US provides Israel with more than $3 billion in military aid each year. Since ground troops went into Gaza in late October, in combination with the Israeli air force, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Tzipi Livni is Israel’s former foreign minister and worked for its foreign intelligence service, Mossad. She’s steadfast about how the IDF operates.
“We never target civilians,” she says.
But people are dying in their tens of thousands, and Israel is the one dropping the bombs, I say.
“I was in the Israeli security cabinet, and I know how the Israeli army is working … every target is getting the approval of the justice ministry,” she responds.
“We have no other alternative … [We] try
to avoid these casualties and … can’t.”
Avi Dichter is a current cabinet minister and also a former head of Shin Bet.
He says “everything, literally everything,” went wrong on October 7, and is firm about Israel’s response to the deadliest day in its history.
“They will get cemeteries. That’s what Hamas is going to get. I’m telling you, the tunnels that they dug … they dug the biggest cemetery in the world.”
Critics though, say Israel being driven by rage, humiliation and revenge has meant far more innocent people are dying.
“That the IDF is doing everything to avoid civilian casualties is a blunt lie. Straight lie,” former Israeli army commander Yehuda Shaul says.
“And that’s a hard statement to say about my own army, but it’s the truth.”
Shaul says Israel’s military strategy for 15 years has been about using disproportionate destruction as a means of deterrence – but he accuses the IDF of now loosening some of its restraints.
“So if before, let’s say for a company officer in Hamas you are allowed to take out five civilians … now in this war, for every rank-and-file guy in Hamas you’re allowed to take out … 15 civilians.
“A move like this can explain a lot of what we see.”
Bullet holes in the windshield of a car at the site of Israel's Supernova Music Festival that was attacked by Hamas on October 7. Getty Images: Alexi J. Rosenfeld
Shaul understands the desire for revenge. After watching videos of October 7, he says he was both “physically sick” and “full of rage”.
“I also had the feeling that these are animals, we need to go there and bomb the hell out of them. But then you stop for a second and you think … what did we think is going to happen after 16 years of siege?”
Shaul says what Israel is currently doing in Gaza is not going to deliver security for Israel but “sow the seeds of hatreds for generations to come”.
Life under occupation
Palestinian academic Abdeljawad Omar lives in the occupied West Bank, and says he knew from the first moment of October 7 it would “bring a ferocious Israel and a ferocious Israeli response”.
He says life under occupation was already like being in “survival mode”.
“We sometimes feel like we live in this field of targets. I’ve seen personally when an Israeli
sniper hit one of my friends and high-fived his other soldier … that he got the target.”
“Life for us is struggling not to drown.”
Professor Dalal Iriqat, a fellow Palestinian academic who specialises in conflict resolution, says Israel’s broader agenda is obvious.
“The end goal is to annex the land. It doesn’t take a genius to come up with that conclusion.”
She says that agenda was evident in a recent trip Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made to the UN, where he showed a map of “the new Middle East” depicting the state of Israel without the occupied Palestinian territory.
“He doesn’t see Palestine, he doesn’t see Palestinians,” she says.
“He doesn’t view any Palestinian
as a human being.”
The International Court of Justice found in a preliminary ruling it was plausible that Israel’s conduct could amount to genocide – something former Shin Bet leader Ayalon refutes.
“The intention [of genocide is] to kill a race or a people. We do not have this intention,” he says.
“We are facing a major threat and we are fighting against a threat. We are doing many mistake[s], but it is far from being genocide.”
Why Netanyahu won’t stop
One theme that came through from many of those I interviewed — from across the political spectrum — is the current lack of confidence in Israel’s prime minister.
Opinion polls suggest Netanyahu will struggle to survive the electoral retributions that will inevitably flow once the war is over.
I ask former foreign minister Livni if she trusts him.
“Never,” she says.
Can there be peace while Netanyahu is PM?
“No. No.”
Barak agrees.
“Basically, he lies to everyone, and no-one trusts him,” he says.
“In a normal country, Netanyahu would have resigned on the 8th of October.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairing a cabinet meeting. AP Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg
Livni’s politics are centre-right, while Barak’s are centre-left.
Barak goes even further with his criticisms of Netanyahu, claiming he “deliberately and systematically” boosted Hamas by allowing Qatar to give large amounts of money to the militant group in recent years.
He claims Netanyahu did this because the world would never accept a Palestinian state dominated by Hamas.
Shaul says this funding served to strengthen Hamas in Gaza, as part of Netanyahu’s plan to prevent a Palestinian state:
“He fed the beast and it exploded
in our face.”
Four Corners put these allegations to Netanyahu’s office, but it did not respond by deadline.
Netanyahu has justified the Qatar funding by saying it was necessary to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Having helped build up Hamas, he has since vowed to destroy it.
------
[Insert: Exactly -- Israel Found the Hamas Money Machine Years Ago. Nobody Turned It Off.
"Doctrine of Hamas"
[...]
[2018. That would be the Netanyahu-Trump team. Make sense with what we know now about how Netanyahu was helping Hamas then. See
]Ehud Barak blames Binyamin Netanyahu for “the greatest failure in Israel’s history”
[...]
“The immediate operational problems are being fixed now,” he says. “But a much deeper assessment will have to take place later.” When that happens, he is convinced that the blame will fall on Mr Netanyahu. “It will be clear that, above all, Netanyahu had a flawed strategy of keeping Hamas alive and kicking… so he could use them [Hamas] to weaken the Palestinian Authority so that no-one in the world could demand that we hold negotiations [with the Palestinians].”
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173391967
The insert from - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173146040
Israeli leaders believed that Hamas was more interested in governing than fighting. By the time the agents discovered the ledgers in 2018, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was encouraging the government of Qatar to deliver millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip. He gambled that the money would buy stability and peace.
[Hmm. Or he was running a policy to keep the PLO out of the picture. See above.]
Mr. Levy recalled briefing Mr. Netanyahu personally in 2015 about the Hamas portfolio.
P - “I can tell you for sure that I talked to him about this,” Mr. Levy said. “But he didn’t care that much about it.”
[...]
By 2016, Mr. Netanyahu’s government had begun pursuing a strategy to contain Hamas .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html .. by allowing the Qataris to send money to Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu says that money was humanitarian aid. Privately, he told others that stabilizing Hamas would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173474718]
------
Just over a year ago, Netanyahu brought together the most right-wing coalition Israel has ever seen, appointing Itamar Ben-Gvir as national security minister and Bezalel Smotrich finance minister.
Ben-Gvir has criminal convictions for racist incitement and supporting a Zionist terrorist group.
Itamar Ben Gvir, centre, and Bezalel Smotrich, right. AP Photo: Maya Alleruzzo
---
[Who cares when they were written. Millions read them every day. Millions live their life by them. You know that. Both ones who use violence as their way of doing things, or only after all else has failed. And peace lovers. Hamas, of course, would have it's moderates too. Every organization does.
P - It's hard to cop the audiences of your top Christian tv evangelists, they bump into me early morning here sometimes. Have many of them really lost the ability to work things out by themselves? Their reliance of their pastor passing on words of advice from that book written so long ago is troubling.
P - Plus certainly zealots in both Hamas and Israel's present government likely read them every day. LOL, the new speaker of your House, Mike Johnson, how about that guy. One who would pick and choose what parts of the Bible he is going to influence your government through. Oh and don't forget, Ben Gvir ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173463071]
---
“Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are two racist messianic guys who seem to have a very strong leverage on Bibi,” Barak claims, using Netanyahu’s nickname.
“Until now, our conflict with the Palestinians was basically political and territorial … they want to turn it into a major religious war between Israel and Islam.”
Both men are implacably opposed to a Palestinian state, with Smotrich even publicly denying the existence of Palestinians.
I ask Ayalon for his assessment.
“I see them as terrorists and as Jewish messianics,” he says.
When I double check someone who has run Israel’s intelligence agency is calling two of the country’s senior ministers terrorists, he says: “Of course. They are.”
Four Corners put questions to Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s offices but did not receive a response.
The forever war?
For all the claims and counterclaims I encounter in talking to both Israelis and Palestinians, one thing is indisputable: the nature and extent of this war will continue.
Dichter makes clear he doesn’t see an end coming any time soon.
“It may take a year or two,” he says.
[ IDF troops in Gaza City. Supplied: IR Productions
IMAGE - video link .. https://mediacore-live-production.akamaized.net/video/01/rh/Z/np.mp4 ]
“We’re in a very bleak, very dark moment in our own history,” says Palestinian Omar.
“But at the same time … from the depths of this darkness, we can always see some light.
“Perhaps there is some hope that we can reconfigure life in the holy land in a way that treats people equally, treats people with the humanity that they deserve.”
Israeli Ayalon says Palestinians need to have hope for there to be any chance of peace.
“You cannot deter a person or a group of people if they believe that they have nothing to lose.
“We Israelis, we shall have security only when they will have hope.”
Watch the Four Corners documentary, ‘The Forever War’, tonight from 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
Be the first to hear about our next story. Subscribe to the Four Corners newsletter and follow Four Corners on Facebook.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-11/israel-insiders-gaza-war-four-corners/103554014
"Witnesses of Aid Convoy Violence Describe Shooting, Panic and Desperation"
----------
Related:
You have 5.2 million people or so, that have no civil or political rights in their own land.
How do you not call that apartheid?
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174017328
[...]How Israel Quietly Crushed Early American Jewish Dissent on Palestine
“Our Palestine Question,” an explosive new book by Geoffrey Levin, delves into American Jewish McCarthyism from the 1950s through late 1970s.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173965072
How an AP photographer made this image of Israeli female soldiers taking a selfie at the Gaza border
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173962873
[...]Why can't you answer my fucking question?
"tell me what your plan is to extend civil and political rights to the 5.2 million or so people you've conquered"
Maybe your acknowledged expert can answer it. He knows Israel is an apartheid state too. He knows you're genocidal filth... He just approves of it
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173927675
Shimon Peres doubts Israel can win Permanent war or Survive Annexation of West Bank
November, 2015 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=118223699
Smotrich at Knesset: Ben-Gurion should have ‘finished the job,’ thrown out Arabs
September, 2022 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170039047
Netanyahu’s Betrayal of Democracy Is a Betrayal of Israel
January, 2023 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170949384
The U.S.-Israel Relationship No Longer Makes Sense
April, 2023 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171638982
[thought March 11 2024 - unless it is to help/force the formation of an independent Palestinian state,
which also looks a forlorn hope yet the Palestinians are not going anywhere and the Zionists still
insist on Israel being a Jewish state. A bit like far-fight Christian zealots in the USA aggressively
insisting on America becoming a theocracy. It really is pretty much fucked up, eh. Thanks largely to
religion .. enough thought for now]
‘Unsafe in own home’: Israeli settlers spread terror in South Hebron Hills
"Israel's Supreme Court strikes down disputed law that limited court oversight
January, 2024 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173557366
Corrupted cowboys
[...]How Far Will Republicans Go To Bring America to Her Knees on Behalf of Putin & Trump?
[...]Russia’s battlefield, in other words, has now shifted from Ukraine to the US political system and our homes via radio, TV, and the internet, all in the hopes of ending US aid to the democracy they’ve brutally attacked.
P - And the momentum is following that shift: Russia is close to having the upper hand in Ukraine because of Putin’s ability — via Trump and Johnson — to get Republican politicians to mouth his talking points and propaganda.
P - Now, with Speaker “Moscow Mike” Johnson shutting down the House of Representatives so nobody can offer a discharge petition that would force a vote on Ukraine aid (and aid for Palestinian refugees, Taiwan, and our southern border), it’s becoming more and more clear that Vladimir Putin is running the Republican party via his well-paid stooge, Donald Trump.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173998216
brooklyn13, Fuck your - "It's really rather sad, if not pathetic, that you insist
on trying to conflate the WB murderous settlers with Israel as a whole."
No one here, including me, has ever made your conflation. Yet you keep repeating your asinine lie.
March, 2024 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173963629
brooklyn13, One, kind of vicious actually, sly and sleazy guy you are on the Israel question. Your
"In which he gives a shout out to our own resident pro-Hamas crowd:
"And Hamas’s fellow travelers and useful idiots in the West, most of them self-
described progressives, parrot that denialism.." (about the sexual violence)"
is as sleazy and dishonest as it gets.
How many times have you accused people here of being pro-Hamas as you did to None there.
You have not one ounce of evidence for that dishonest slur.
And every time you have made it here it has been emphatically and justly rejected.
Asshole.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173985611
What more to say about the Israel-Palestinian war which we haven't said repeatedly
before, except to observe and comment on new developments as they occur.
"Your reply to that article is WHAT ABOUT what Trump would have done?."
No, it wasn't only that. I also included
Grading Biden on the Israel-Hamas War
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173448365
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173960478
and all
Netanyahu doesn’t give a rip about Biden. He’ll do whatever he wants...
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173448397
Pentagon Releases First-Ever Policy on Civilian Harm Reduction
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173494669
2012 - Service to Israel Tugs at Identity of Arab Citizens
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173514232
The U.S. and Israel: An Embrace Shows Signs of Strain After Oct. 7
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173537773
Biden has been bad for Palestinians. Trump would be worse.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173961023
All here - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/replies.aspx?msg=173448365
March, 2024 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173963425
----------
IMAGE - [ video link https://mediacore-live-production.akamaized.net/video/01/rh/Z/n6.mp4 ]
Four Corners goes face-to-face with Israel’s powerful political and military voices.
By John Lyons — with Jonathan Miller, Mayeta Clark and Maddy King
Four Corners
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=australia+four+corners
Updated 11 Mar 2024, 9:49am
Published 11 Mar 2024, 5:50am
Ehud Barak says more than two decades ago he was new enough in Israeli politics to tell the truth.
He declared then that if he was a Palestinian, he’d probably be a terrorist.
That comment could have derailed a spectacular military and political career, but the former general chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) went on to become prime minister and defence minister.
Today, as the world holds its breath in anticipation of a ceasefire in Gaza, the former leader offers a frank assessment of Israeli intelligence.
He describes Hamas’s violent October 7 attack – in which about 1,200 people were killed and around 240 kidnapped – as “the worst failure of our intelligence and operational forces since the establishment of the state of Israel”.
But when I ask why the most powerful army in the Middle East has killed so many children in response (with more than 600 dying a week, on average), he replies:
“I don’t think that anyone made the deliberate decision
to kill children.”
The IDF is known for its targeted assassinations and Barak himself says he previously participated in, and ordered, several killings.
But, he notes, “I never deluded myself to believe that by killing any individual you solve the problem … it just delayed the real decision.
“Real decisions … are not about how to kill mosquitoes more effectively. It’s about how to drain the swamp.”
IMAGE - [ video link .. https://mediacore-live-production.akamaized.net/video/01/rh/Z/na.mp4 ]
Israel’s ferocious retaliation to October 7 has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead.
Gaza was already one of the most desperate places on Earth, and now vast sections are reduced to rubble with people facing starvation and disease.
Defenders of Israel’s conduct say such high civilian deaths have been inevitable because Hamas embeds itself in civilian communities and Gaza is such a densely populated area.
A Palestinian woman embraces the body of her five-year-old niece who was killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza. Reuters: Mohammed Salem
Ami Ayalon is among them, and he’s more blunt than Barak, dispensing with any diplomatic niceties.
“There was no war like this ever fought … the most populated battlefield ever fought in the history of wars,” he says.
Ayalon formerly ran Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, and says it’s “almost impossible to hit a military target without killing or hitting civilians. This is one reason”.
“The second reason, which is much more important, [is that] Hamas, deliberately, are using civilian targets; schools, hospitals … so Hamas is doing everything in order for us to kill or to use their people as a human shield.”
The US provides Israel with more than $3 billion in military aid each year. Since ground troops went into Gaza in late October, in combination with the Israeli air force, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed.
Tzipi Livni is Israel’s former foreign minister and worked for its foreign intelligence service, Mossad. She’s steadfast about how the IDF operates.
“We never target civilians,” she says.
But people are dying in their tens of thousands, and Israel is the one dropping the bombs, I say.
“I was in the Israeli security cabinet, and I know how the Israeli army is working … every target is getting the approval of the justice ministry,” she responds.
“We have no other alternative … [We] try
to avoid these casualties and … can’t.”
Avi Dichter is a current cabinet minister and also a former head of Shin Bet.
He says “everything, literally everything,” went wrong on October 7, and is firm about Israel’s response to the deadliest day in its history.
“They will get cemeteries. That’s what Hamas is going to get. I’m telling you, the tunnels that they dug … they dug the biggest cemetery in the world.”
Critics though, say Israel being driven by rage, humiliation and revenge has meant far more innocent people are dying.
“That the IDF is doing everything to avoid civilian casualties is a blunt lie. Straight lie,” former Israeli army commander Yehuda Shaul says.
“And that’s a hard statement to say about my own army, but it’s the truth.”
Shaul says Israel’s military strategy for 15 years has been about using disproportionate destruction as a means of deterrence – but he accuses the IDF of now loosening some of its restraints.
“So if before, let’s say for a company officer in Hamas you are allowed to take out five civilians … now in this war, for every rank-and-file guy in Hamas you’re allowed to take out … 15 civilians.
“A move like this can explain a lot of what we see.”
Bullet holes in the windshield of a car at the site of Israel's Supernova Music Festival that was attacked by Hamas on October 7. Getty Images: Alexi J. Rosenfeld
Shaul understands the desire for revenge. After watching videos of October 7, he says he was both “physically sick” and “full of rage”.
“I also had the feeling that these are animals, we need to go there and bomb the hell out of them. But then you stop for a second and you think … what did we think is going to happen after 16 years of siege?”
Shaul says what Israel is currently doing in Gaza is not going to deliver security for Israel but “sow the seeds of hatreds for generations to come”.
Life under occupation
Palestinian academic Abdeljawad Omar lives in the occupied West Bank, and says he knew from the first moment of October 7 it would “bring a ferocious Israel and a ferocious Israeli response”.
He says life under occupation was already like being in “survival mode”.
“We sometimes feel like we live in this field of targets. I’ve seen personally when an Israeli
sniper hit one of my friends and high-fived his other soldier … that he got the target.”
“Life for us is struggling not to drown.”
Professor Dalal Iriqat, a fellow Palestinian academic who specialises in conflict resolution, says Israel’s broader agenda is obvious.
“The end goal is to annex the land. It doesn’t take a genius to come up with that conclusion.”
She says that agenda was evident in a recent trip Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made to the UN, where he showed a map of “the new Middle East” depicting the state of Israel without the occupied Palestinian territory.
“He doesn’t see Palestine, he doesn’t see Palestinians,” she says.
“He doesn’t view any Palestinian
as a human being.”
The International Court of Justice found in a preliminary ruling it was plausible that Israel’s conduct could amount to genocide – something former Shin Bet leader Ayalon refutes.
“The intention [of genocide is] to kill a race or a people. We do not have this intention,” he says.
“We are facing a major threat and we are fighting against a threat. We are doing many mistake[s], but it is far from being genocide.”
Why Netanyahu won’t stop
One theme that came through from many of those I interviewed — from across the political spectrum — is the current lack of confidence in Israel’s prime minister.
Opinion polls suggest Netanyahu will struggle to survive the electoral retributions that will inevitably flow once the war is over.
I ask former foreign minister Livni if she trusts him.
“Never,” she says.
Can there be peace while Netanyahu is PM?
“No. No.”
Barak agrees.
“Basically, he lies to everyone, and no-one trusts him,” he says.
“In a normal country, Netanyahu would have resigned on the 8th of October.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairing a cabinet meeting. AP Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg
Livni’s politics are centre-right, while Barak’s are centre-left.
Barak goes even further with his criticisms of Netanyahu, claiming he “deliberately and systematically” boosted Hamas by allowing Qatar to give large amounts of money to the militant group in recent years.
He claims Netanyahu did this because the world would never accept a Palestinian state dominated by Hamas.
Shaul says this funding served to strengthen Hamas in Gaza, as part of Netanyahu’s plan to prevent a Palestinian state:
“He fed the beast and it exploded
in our face.”
Four Corners put these allegations to Netanyahu’s office, but it did not respond by deadline.
Netanyahu has justified the Qatar funding by saying it was necessary to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Having helped build up Hamas, he has since vowed to destroy it.
------
[Insert: Exactly -- Israel Found the Hamas Money Machine Years Ago. Nobody Turned It Off.
"Doctrine of Hamas"
[...]
[2018. That would be the Netanyahu-Trump team. Make sense with what we know now about how Netanyahu was helping Hamas then. See
]Ehud Barak blames Binyamin Netanyahu for “the greatest failure in Israel’s history”
[...]
“The immediate operational problems are being fixed now,” he says. “But a much deeper assessment will have to take place later.” When that happens, he is convinced that the blame will fall on Mr Netanyahu. “It will be clear that, above all, Netanyahu had a flawed strategy of keeping Hamas alive and kicking… so he could use them [Hamas] to weaken the Palestinian Authority so that no-one in the world could demand that we hold negotiations [with the Palestinians].”
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173391967
The insert from - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173146040
Israeli leaders believed that Hamas was more interested in governing than fighting. By the time the agents discovered the ledgers in 2018, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was encouraging the government of Qatar to deliver millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip. He gambled that the money would buy stability and peace.
[Hmm. Or he was running a policy to keep the PLO out of the picture. See above.]
Mr. Levy recalled briefing Mr. Netanyahu personally in 2015 about the Hamas portfolio.
P - “I can tell you for sure that I talked to him about this,” Mr. Levy said. “But he didn’t care that much about it.”
[...]
By 2016, Mr. Netanyahu’s government had begun pursuing a strategy to contain Hamas .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html .. by allowing the Qataris to send money to Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu says that money was humanitarian aid. Privately, he told others that stabilizing Hamas would lessen pressure on him to negotiate toward a Palestinian state.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173474718]
------
Just over a year ago, Netanyahu brought together the most right-wing coalition Israel has ever seen, appointing Itamar Ben-Gvir as national security minister and Bezalel Smotrich finance minister.
Ben-Gvir has criminal convictions for racist incitement and supporting a Zionist terrorist group.
Itamar Ben Gvir, centre, and Bezalel Smotrich, right. AP Photo: Maya Alleruzzo
---
[Who cares when they were written. Millions read them every day. Millions live their life by them. You know that. Both ones who use violence as their way of doing things, or only after all else has failed. And peace lovers. Hamas, of course, would have it's moderates too. Every organization does.
P - It's hard to cop the audiences of your top Christian tv evangelists, they bump into me early morning here sometimes. Have many of them really lost the ability to work things out by themselves? Their reliance of their pastor passing on words of advice from that book written so long ago is troubling.
P - Plus certainly zealots in both Hamas and Israel's present government likely read them every day. LOL, the new speaker of your House, Mike Johnson, how about that guy. One who would pick and choose what parts of the Bible he is going to influence your government through. Oh and don't forget, Ben Gvir ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173463071]
---
“Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are two racist messianic guys who seem to have a very strong leverage on Bibi,” Barak claims, using Netanyahu’s nickname.
“Until now, our conflict with the Palestinians was basically political and territorial … they want to turn it into a major religious war between Israel and Islam.”
Both men are implacably opposed to a Palestinian state, with Smotrich even publicly denying the existence of Palestinians.
I ask Ayalon for his assessment.
“I see them as terrorists and as Jewish messianics,” he says.
When I double check someone who has run Israel’s intelligence agency is calling two of the country’s senior ministers terrorists, he says: “Of course. They are.”
Four Corners put questions to Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s offices but did not receive a response.
The forever war?
For all the claims and counterclaims I encounter in talking to both Israelis and Palestinians, one thing is indisputable: the nature and extent of this war will continue.
Dichter makes clear he doesn’t see an end coming any time soon.
“It may take a year or two,” he says.
[ IDF troops in Gaza City. Supplied: IR Productions
IMAGE - video link .. https://mediacore-live-production.akamaized.net/video/01/rh/Z/np.mp4 ]
“We’re in a very bleak, very dark moment in our own history,” says Palestinian Omar.
“But at the same time … from the depths of this darkness, we can always see some light.
“Perhaps there is some hope that we can reconfigure life in the holy land in a way that treats people equally, treats people with the humanity that they deserve.”
Israeli Ayalon says Palestinians need to have hope for there to be any chance of peace.
“You cannot deter a person or a group of people if they believe that they have nothing to lose.
“We Israelis, we shall have security only when they will have hope.”
Watch the Four Corners documentary, ‘The Forever War’, tonight from 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
Be the first to hear about our next story. Subscribe to the Four Corners newsletter and follow Four Corners on Facebook.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-11/israel-insiders-gaza-war-four-corners/103554014
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
