PART 1.
As I write these words, Gaza has become the greatest contest in history between unrestrained brutality and epic courage, sustained by sacrifice beyond imagination and overseen by the unmatched hypocrisy of the most civilized.
A demonically brainwashed IDF [the Israel Defence Force], taught since early childhood to view the Palestinians as subhuman, and armed with the deadliest gadgetry of war, is in battle against a God-infused Hamas. The contest is between the F-35 fighter jets and the RPGs with Yassin warheads, assisted by the Al-Ghoul sniper rifle. It should therefore have taken a month for the IDF to roll over Hamas, but we are into the eleventh month now and the Israeli Generals have conceded that they cannot put down their adversary.
Meanwhile, the IDF has destroyed or made unliveable, 70 percent of Gaza. A study by The Lancet [July 5, 2024] estimates that 186000 inhabitants of Gaza have died because of enforced starvation, disease, inadequate healthcare, and more than 70000 tons of bombs dropped on them. Many times this number lies wounded or crippled. Countless times, the “dumb” 2000-pound bomb has been the weapon of choice of the IDF for precision strikes to take out Hamas commanders! Every time they strike and kill women and children, they claim that Hamas was using them as human shields and that most of the victims were mere collateral damage. When they have no real success to show in their battle against Hamas, they claim that the latter were embedded deep in underground tunnels so that they could not be got at. Israeli allies never ask them which of these two claims was true, and have seldom condemned them for the wanton slaying of innocent civilians, mostly women and children.
Nearly every hospital in Gaza has either been destroyed or made non-functional; almost all schools have met a similar fate; up until Aug 7, the IDF had killed 166 journalists and targeted 170 shelters; doctors and healthcare workers have been killed by their dozens, and scores of women, children, and hospital patients have been killed by snipers or rifle fire at point-blank ranges. Seven times has the IDF targeted “safe zones” designated by them, where homeless Gazans were sent scurrying to seek safety.
On Jul 27 an Israeli false flag missile fell on a soccer field in village Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, killing 12 children. This was immediately blamed on Hezbollah, and Mr Donald Trump, addressing an election rally, lost no time condemning this “atrocity.” Nearly every day of the past ten months children of Gaza have been wantonly killed by the IDF, but drawn no condemnation by a US politician of note. Just make a note of the last few attacks: On Aug 1, fifteen were killed and 29 wounded; Aug 3, sixteen were killed and sixty wounded; Aug 4, thirty were killed and nineteen wounded; Aug 8, sixteen were killed and dozens wounded with a score missing; and on Aug 10, more than a hundred were killed by the three 2000 pound bombs dropped, and scores were wounded. This attack came during the morning [Fajr] prayers. Most of the bodies of the victims were so shredded that the already undermanned and decimated rescue teams collected bodies by parts, made them “bodies” by weight, and buried them. On this same day, as if to commemorate the massacre, the U.S. signed off on another $3.5 billion arms sale to Israel.
All the attacks recounted above were on schools. All the schools were known to the IDF as shelters. Most of the killed were women and children. But there was no condemnation emanating from Washington or most of Europe.
All these weeks of unrestrained carnage by the IDF were not enough to provoke Hamas fighters to take a single shot at the IDF ambulances and “Medivac” helicopters used to evacuate their casualties when they were well within sniper range of Gaza fighters. This they have refused to do because it was against the Geneva Conventions! It is not easy to imagine this level of commitment and discipline. On the other hand, the IDF has been fighting this battle unrestrained by any rules of engagement. Most of them are the disciples of Rabbi Dov Lior who has ruled every atrocity committed on the Gazans as both moral and justified. This, and their brainwashing since early childhood, makes it easy for members of the IDF to kill for fun. And yet they remain “the most moral army in the world”, and so many fine friends insist that what they shared with Israel were values!
Hamas fighters have replied to this brutality with uncommon valour. Thus far, they have destroyed or disabled more than a thousand “indestructible” Merkavas, touted as the best tanks in the world. Only an infantryman, who has been in the vicinity of a tank in battle, can imagine the courage it requires to move up to within ten yards of a tank and take a shot at it. This is what the RPG requires of Hamas fighters to do, and there are tens of videos showing them running up to these tanks, placing explosives between their turrets and hulls, and blowing them up.
PART 2.
The battle for Gaza did not begin on October 7, 2023. This is the latest phase of a war that began a hundred years ago when the first religious Zionists set foot on the soil of Palestine. This breed came with the sole aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine in which the Arabs would be no better than their serfs, or they would be driven out through ethnic cleansing or exterminated by genocide. There was never to be a two-state Palestine. That is why Israel is the only country which neither has a constitution nor defined national borders because fixed borders cannot be expanded except by war. But, to begin with, the religious Zionists were small in numbers and influence. However, over the years, both their numbers and influence grew, and in the last few years, they have become the dictating force in Israel.
It is now clear that before Oct 7, 2023, the authorities in Israel had already concluded that since the Arabs were not willing to take it lying down, the time had come to ethnically cleanse both Gaza and the West Bank. On Oct 13, 2023, a ten-page document was circulated by the Israeli “Intelligence Ministry”. This is a small government body which writes policy recommendations for the government, the intelligence agencies, and the IDF. This document recommended that the population of Gaza be ethnically cleansed and pushed out into the Sinai. Obviously, this thought must have had a fair bit of gestation time before being reduced to a policy recommendation.
A New York Times article of Dec 2, 2023, asserted that Israel was well aware of the Hamas operation of Oct 7, 2023, a year before it was launched, though it did not know its date of launching. A forty-page Israeli intelligence document entitled “Jerico Wall” laid this plan bare, but this was put aside by the authorities with the remarks that the Hamas plan was merely “aspirational” because Hamas did not have the capability of carrying it out. It would therefore be reasonable to believe that Israel allowed Hamas to carry out its operation on Oct 7, because this would furnish it with the justification to attack Gaza in full strength and cleanse it of all its inhabitants. What the Israelis could not have foreseen was that the Hamas operation would be such a stunning success and that Hamas would fight the IDF counterattack to a standstill so that ethnic cleansing would not be adequate for Israel’s purposes, and only genocide would do. This is the eleventh month of this genocide which is being daily recorded both in print and on film, and much of the Western and Arab worlds are quiet. Except once, the U.S. has not taken the trouble to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, has quashed similar calls made by other states at the UN, but has not flinched from supplying Israel with the tools being used to destroy Gaza and further the genocide.
A July 7, 2024, article in Haaretz finally spilt the beans to the effect that the IDF “ordered Hannibal Directive on Oct 7 to prevent Hamas taking soldiers captive.” It is therefore now believed by many of the most respected commentators that of the 1200 Israelis killed on Oct 7, about half may have been killed by IDF helicopter gunships and tanks! This would make it an atrocity shared equally between Hamas and the IDF.
Immediately following Oct 7 Israel spread the canard of the “forty beheaded babies, and of mass rapes committed by the invading Hamas horde. Both these claims of atrocities were circulated to justify the genocidal Israeli brutalities that were to be visited on the people of Gaza. But both these were conclusively debunked by credible investigative reporters and shown up for the lies that they were, but that was scarcely enough to assuage the IDF’s thirst for revenge.
By June 2024, polio was back in Gaza. The Israelis knew that at that stage, even if they took their foot off the genocide accelerator, starvation and epidemics would do the job for them. All they had to do was to wait. But perhaps working faster than this countdown was Israel’s own countdown to implosion due to a myriad of internal stresses. Not the least of these was the anger of the 100.000 Israelis obliged to flee their settlements abutting the Lebanese border, due to Hezbollah bombardment. It was their demand that their settlements be made secure by pushing Hezbollah north beyond the Litani River. Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Defence Minister, had promised them that this was his first priority, but then Hamas did not cooperate. Instead of rolling over in a month, it is now the eleventh month going and they are still fighting. So the Israelis cannot withdraw their forces from Gaza and redeploy them in the north for an attack on Hezbollah. And even if they could do this, what was going to keep Iran from being drawn in on the side of Hezbollah? In their last two war games painting this scenario, the result was a defeat for Israel.
It was this situation which led Netanyahu to conclude that he had no other option but to broaden the war in such a way that it would bring in the U.S. on its side. This would not only balance the opposing forces in Israel’s favour but in the fog of this expanded war, would also allow him to complete the Gaza genocide.
So he went off to the U.S. to address the joint houses of Congress on July 24, much to the chagrin of U.S. patriots, most of whom regard him as a war criminal. As he was addressing the Congress, the heads of the CIA and Mossad were meeting in Rome.
From what followed, it is clear that he had received the assurances from the U.S. that he had come to get. On Jul 27, an Israeli false flag missile strike killed 12 Druze kids in Majdal Shams for which Hezbollah was blamed. Israel promised swift retaliation, and on July 30, it bombed a civilian residential area and killed senior Hezbollah Commander Fawad Shukr, along with some women and children. On July 31, it killed Ismail Haniyeh, the Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau and the chief Hamas negotiator for ceasefire talks in Gaza. Iran promised significant retaliation, and the U.S, who had repeatedly assured the world that it was working on Israel to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza, instead of condemning Haniyeh’s assassination, immediately assured Israel that it would come to its defence in case of war! This assurance was given by its Secretary of Defence on Aug 4.
However, the U.S. battlefleet which would defend Israel had already left port for this defence. It set sail BEFORE the Israeli false flag operation in Majdal Shams which set the ball rolling and created the anticipation of the war that would break out.
Lloyd Austin’s Aug 4 assurance to Israel, had Sergei Shoigu [Putin’s National Security Advisor] fly to Tehran the next day. Reportedly, Shoigu brought in much military hardware for Iran, and also the advice “that revenge was a dish best served cold.”
As Iran took time to weigh its options, Israel sweated. It is reported that it was considering a preemptive strike on Iran. It was not lost on anyone that this strike would entail Israel’s “Samson Option”, i.e. it would be a nuclear strike, which would probably lead to a nuclear war between the powers. And all this because the Palestinians have refused to roll over and play serfs to the Israelis? This is the very opposite of the American Civil War which took 600,000 American lives because one side decided to fight for the freedom of the slaves. And today the US was willing to stand by Israel to keep the Arabs either as serfs or to destroy them, and was even willing to unleash World War 3 on us to see this happen!
The Russian transfer of military hardware to Iran would have been considerably more than just that. Encapsulated in it must be the sternest warning the US has received in many a year. Perhaps this will pull the world back from the brink.
While these potentially momentous events have monopolised our attention, two barbarous bills are awaiting debate and enactment in the Israeli Knesset. The first seeks to give immunity to Israeli police and IDF for killing a Palestinian, and the second aims to give power to jail authorities to kill Palestinian prisoners to reduce overcrowding in Israeli prisons. And discussion has already taken place on an Israeli TV channel on whether the rape of Palestinian prisoners was moral and justified. Many expect that this issue will also reach the Knesset for formal debate.
Whether Armageddon will be averted or not, the fear of Armageddon has certainly deferred discussion of the legalization of the rape of non-Jewish Israeli prisoners. Thank God for small mercies.
Email: saeedakhtarmalik85@gmail.com