This is a story about how mainstream media is covering-up for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
On 20 November 2023, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences, issued a statement warning that “[s]ince 7 October, the assault on Palestinian women’s dignity and rights has taken on new and terrifying dimensions, as thousands have become victims of war crimes, crimes against humanity and an unfolding genocide”. The Special Rapporteur “expressed alarm at the genocidal and dehumanising rhetoric about the Palestinian people, including women and children, by top Israeli Government officials and public figures calling them “children of darkness””. The Special Rapporteur referred to the description of Palestinians as ‘human animals’ and the calls for a ‘second Nakba’ by Israeli officials, cautioning that “[s]uch statements make the Israeli Government’s intention to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, absolutely and consistently clear”
A Times ( NYT) article ‘Screams Without Words’ was published on 28 December 2023. It swept the mainstream press worldwide. For example, The Sydney Morning Herald dutifully carried the article soon after. In Australia, the National Press gallery launched an attack on the United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesa Albanese for saying: “Israel cannot claim self defence against the population it occupies,.”
We must be careful about accounts given in mainstream press by the Israeli lobby in How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7. This is because earlier claims that Hamas beheaded babies and burned their victims on that day proved false. Also, such atrocities do not accord with one of the main objectives of the mission on 7 October by Hamas, that being to capture Israelis as a bargaining chip against future Israeli reprisals.
A cursory look at one of the writers of this piece, Jeffrey Gettleman, shows the NYT had publisjed no fewer than 25 articles by him on alleged ‘violence perpetrated by Hamas’ between 7 October and 28 December 2023. Gettlerman is yet to write a single article about the genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinians.
Gettlerman, based in New Delhi, is an experienced war correspondent having done many tours embedded with the US military in both Iraq and Afghanistan. On his own admission, witnesses (to event on 7 October) provide little if any direct evidence as to the identity of the perpetrators. The NYT journalist refers to videos claimed by the Israelis to be evidence. The NYT article carried some still frames but no actual footage.
Lies
There is now plenty of evidence of fabrication by the Israelis obscuring their role in the violence on 7 October 2023. Plus there is an admission by Israeli helicopter pilot to suggest the burnt bodies were the work of incoming Israeli shells, possibly fired under the ‘hannibal directive‘, or in the fog of battle. Regardless, many of the settler casualties appear to have resulted from friendly fire.
Allegations of rape by Israel’s protagonists have surfaced late in the current genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. So there is a motive for fabrication by the Israelis. The NYT report says: “… Moshe Fintzy, a deputy superintendent and senior spokesman of Israel’s national police, said, “We have zero autopsies, zero,” making an O with his right hand.“
It’s not just Israel’s hasbara people need to be aware of when trying to ascertain the facts from the NYT report.
Apologists for Israel
There is a lot of nonsense put out by CNN, Fox and papers like the NYT … partly because of the divide between Republican and Democrat over the war on Gaza. Broadly speaking, Murdoch media supports Trump and CNN supports Biden in 2024 Presidential race. Opposition to the genocide is having a direct impact on Biden’s chances of winning a second term.
Mainstream media outlets in the US uncritically put out Israeli propaganda about beheading babies and then burning them. Given US complicity in the genocide, I warn readers of taking at face value any reports by mainstream news outlets from the United States and media outlets in Austrsalia, Canada, UK and Europe that carry these articles.
I find al Jazeera reports on the war on Gaza conflict more balanced. Though bear in mind, Al Jazeera is funded by the Qatari government like other Gulf States is aligned with the US.
What Happened on 7 October
It is clear that the original attack by al Qassam was a disciplined military operation that took some years to develop. In more recent days I am impressed by the measured response by both Hamas and Hezbollah to the Shin Bet assassination of Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut. Arouri, a man of humble beginnings on the West Bank was an important unifying leader in the resistance.
I am always cautious of Israeli bias when it comes to the facts, Israeli governments are prodigious liars spreading rumours of decapitation of babies and the burning of their bodies.
Where are the journalists that we can rely on in the mainstream media?
Max Blumenthal has exposed both the lie and the motivation behind that NYT article that was reprinted uncritically worldwide with claims HAMAS weaponized mass rape.
The allegations hinged on the story of Gal Abdush. But the Abdush family says there is no proof she was raped, and that New York Times reporters interviewed them under false pretences.
It was the democratic party’s Hillary Clinton that gave the mass rape story life back in December and may even have been the reason why the New York Times pushed the story. For that reason alone one would have to be careful about the authenticity and the motivation behind the allegations. It was Hillary Clinton who supported the WMD lie to justify the invasion of Iraqi in 2003. This lie resulted in the deaths of over a million Iraqis.
Even if the Israeli allegations were true or partly true, the authors and their publisher show very little understanding of the reasons for violence. This is despite Gettleman’s memoir Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival focused on ‘atrocities involving rape, mutilation as well as ritualized murders of albinos‘.
No doubt Gettlerman is familiar with Franz Fanon’s views on violence in the Wretched of the Earth, yet he gives the testimony of an Israeli police chief as an explanation:
“… police chief superintendent, said she believed that the brutality against women was a combination of two ferocious forces, “the hatred for Jews and the hatred for women.”
On Violence
This is what Jean Paul Sartre has to say in his preface to Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth written at the time of France’s occupation of Algeria.
“They are cornered between our guns pointed at them and those terrifying compulsions, those desires for murder which spring from the depth of their spirits and which they do not always recognize; for at first it is not their violence, it is ours, which turns back on itself and rends them; and the first action of these oppressed creatures is to bury deep down that hidden anger which their and our moralities condemn and which is however only the last refuge of their humanity. Read Fanon: you will learn how, in the period of their helplessness, their mad impulse to murder is the expression of the natives’ collective unconscious.“
I have read Wretched of the Earth, but have reservations about Fanon’s psychological interpretation of violence. I do not like Fanon’s obsession with violence of his so called ‘natives’.
No matter what happened on 7 October (we may never know), nothing justifies genocide of the Palestinians.
Solution
The solution to violence is pretty simple. Israel has to stop bombing Gaza and the media has to stop printing false claims to justify the mass murder of Palestinians.
Another world is possible. End the occupation, end the siege of Gaza.
Ian Curr
31 Dec 2023, updated 5 Jan and 7 Jan 2024
KIBBUTZ BE’ERI REJECTS STORY IN NEW YORK TIMES OCTOBER 7 EXPOSÉ: “THEY WERE NOT SEXUALLY ABUSED”
“It’s not true,” said the kibbutz spokesperson, of one of the stories featured in the paper’s controversial article.
Destroyed houses are seen on Dec. 20, 2023, in Be’eri, Israel. Photo: Maja Hitij/Getty Images
TWO OF THE three victims specifically singled out by the New York Times in a marquee exposé published in December, which alleged that Hamas had deliberately weaponized sexual violence during the October 7 attacks, were not in fact victims of sexual assault, according to the spokesperson for the Kibbutz Be’eri, which the Times identified as the location of the attack.
The rejection of the Times reporting in the kibbutz by Be’eri spokesperson Michal Paikin further undermines the credibility of the paper’s controversial December article “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.”
The Times article described three alleged victims of sexual assault for whom it reported specific biographical information. One, known as the “woman in the black dress,” was Gal Abdush. Some of her family members have contested the claims made by the Times. The other two alleged victims were unnamed teenage sisters from Kibbutz Be’eri whose precise ages were listed in the New York Times, making it possible to identify them.
According to data from the Israeli government’s public list of the victims who died at the kibbutz during the October 7 attacks, as well as a memorial page established by the community itself, the victims in Kibbutz Be’eri matching the description in the New York Times article were sisters Y. and N. Sharabi, ages 13 and 16. (The Intercept has identified the girls but is not printing their first names.)
“No, they just — they were shot. I’m saying ‘just,’ but they were shot and were not subjected to sexual abuse.”
When asked about the claims made by the New York Times, Paikin independently raised their name. “You’re talking about the Sharabi girls?” she said. “No, they just — they were shot. I’m saying ‘just,’ but they were shot and were not subjected to sexual abuse.” Paikin also disputed the graphic and highly detailed claims of the Israeli special forces paramedic who served as the source for the allegation, which was published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and other media outlets. “It’s not true,” she told The Intercept, referring to the paramedic’s claims about the girls. “They were not sexually abused.”
“We stand by the story and are continuing to report on the issue of sexual violence on Oct. 7,” Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha told The Intercept.
A spokesperson for the Israeli government, Eylon Levy, played a lead role in connecting the anonymous paramedic with international media outlets.
As The Intercept previously reported, Anat Schwartz — an Israeli filmmaker who, before joining the Times, appeared to have no prior experience reporting the news — was hired by the paper to investigate sexual violence on October 7. She worked under Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman, and alongside Adam Sella, who was contracted shortly after October 7 to work for the Times; Sella’s own journalism experience was mostly writing about food and culture. Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Semafor and the former media columnist for the New York Times, reported Sunday that Sella recommended his uncle’s partner, Schwartz, to the Jerusalem bureau chief, and she was brought on board for the investigation. Schwartz told Israeli Army Radio she had personally conducted over 150 interviews for the story.
In a podcast interview produced by Israel’s Channel 12 in January, Schwartz described in detail how she sought to confirm that the girls had been sexually assaulted. She said she first learned of the case when she saw an interview with a man identified as a paramedic from an elite Israeli military unit. The Israeli government coordinated media interviews with the paramedic, who did them with his back turned to the camera to avoid being identified.
In her podcast interview, Schwartz said that she had been unable to find a second source to confirm the paramedic’s account. “I don’t have a second source … for the paramedic with the girls in Be’eri,” she said. “This stage of [getting the] second source, it took a very long time.” While she mentions the second source, in the interview Schwartz does not mention any specifics about actually finding one, and the Times report does not cite any other corroborating witness for its portrayal of the condition in which the girls were allegedly discovered by the paramedic.
In the report, the Times presents unnamed “neighbors” at Kibbutz Be’eri who “said their bodies had been found alone, separated from the rest of their family.” According to the family, however, not even that detail is accurate.
A recent interview in the Israeli media with the Sharabi sisters’ grandparents offers details that directly contradict the Times reporting that the girls at Kibbutz Be’eri were sexually assaulted on October 7. “They were just shot — nothing else had been done to them,” their grandmother Gillian Brisley told Channel 12. (A U.K.-based lawyer for the Brisley family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) The family also gave several interviews to international news outlets before “Screams Without Words” was published that provided information that undercuts the assertions in the Times article, raising questions about why the paper did not include these publicly available details.
THE BRISLEY FAMILY and relatives in Israel who lived with the Sharabis at Kibbutz Be’eri have never asserted that the girls were sexually assaulted. In numerous interviews, the Brisleys have maintained the girls were killed alongside their mother.
According to the Times report, “Screams Without Words”:
A paramedic in an Israeli commando unit said that he had found the bodies of two teenage girls in a room in Be’eri.
One was lying on her side, he said, boxer shorts ripped, bruises by her groin. The other was sprawled on the floor face down, he said, pajama pants pulled to her knees, bottom exposed, semen smeared on her back.
Because his job was to look for survivors, he said, he kept moving and did not document the scene. Neighbors of the two girls killed — who were sisters, 13 and 16 — said their bodies had been found alone, separated from the rest of their family.
The Israeli military allowed the paramedic to speak with reporters on the condition that he not be identified because he serves in “an elite unit.”
On February 29, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcast a feature story on the grandparents, who traveled from Britain to the kibbutz to view the home where their loved ones died and to meet with neighbors, family members, and officials. In the interview, the Brisleys’ description of the deaths of their daughter, Lianne, and their granddaughters contradict virtually every detail, outside of the Be’eri girls’ ages and that they were killed, presented in the Times article.
“They were found between the ‘mamad’” — the house’s safe room — “and the dining room and it’s an awful thing to say, they were just shot — nothing else had been done to them. They were shot,” said Gillian Brisley. “A soldier said he saw our daughter” — the girls’ mother — “but she was covering the two girls and they were shot,” added her husband, Pete, the girls’ grandfather. “The seventh of October was the saddest day of my life.”
Israel’s War on Gaza
Months before the Times story was published on December 28, the Brisleys had already given an interview to the BBC offering details contradicting the depiction that would later appear in the Times, including the assertion the girls were found alone in a room. Gillian Brisley told the BBC on October 30 that the teenage girls were “found all cuddled together with Lianne doing what a mother would do — holding her babies in her arms, trying to protect them at the end.” Brisley said it was a “small comfort but a comfort nevertheless.”
On October 24, the Israeli news site Walla published a story about the family, which also said the girls were killed alongside their mother. Sharon Sharabi, whose brother Eli was the father of the two girls and was kidnapped that day and reportedly taken to Gaza, said that Palestinian fighters entered the family home, broke into their safe room, and killed Lianne and the two girls. “Lianne and [Y] were only identified through dental records, and [N] by DNA,” he said. He did not specify where the forensic examinations had taken place. N was initially reported missing for two weeks because her body had yet to be formally identified.
“I’ve heard all the versions. What’s the truth? I don’t know.”
Sharon Sharabi told The Intercept that his family has not been provided with any specific details about his nieces’ deaths that would allow him to draw a firm conclusion about what happened to them that day. “To tell you concretely what happened in Be’eri, or what happened at the house of the Sharabi family, I don’t have an answer for you,” he said. “There is certainly no credible information I can give you, only testimonies of ZAKA” — private rescue workers — “or of military personnel who arrived at the scene first and saw the atrocities. So any information I might give you is information that I’m not confident about, and therefore I would rather not give it [at all].”
He added, “I’ve heard all the versions. What’s the truth? I don’t know.” Sharabi emphasized that he firmly believes there was widespread sexual violence committed during the attacks of October 7.
BEFORE THE TIMES published its exposé, the Israeli military paramedic claimed in interviews with the Washington Post, CNN, and an Indian news channel to have seen evidence that two girls had been sexually assaulted at a kibbutz. “One was on the bed. Her arm was dangling from the bed frame. Her legs were bare, with bruises, and she had a bullet hole in the chest-neck area,” he told the Post. The details of the recollection closely matched those the paramedic gave to the Times.
The paramedic’s story was met with scepticism by the news site Mondoweiss. In his first interview, on October 25, with an Indian news channel, the paramedic said he witnessed the scene at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, not Be’eri.
According to the official records of October 7 deaths at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, there were no victims that matched the age estimates offered by the paramedic. The closest possible match would have been sisters who were 18 and 20 years old, who were killed at their home at the kibbutz along with their parents.
When Levy, the Israeli government spokesperson, promoted the Indian TV interview on social media that day, he posted an edited portion of the interview which removed reference to Nahal Oz. Instead, Levy wrote in a tweet that it had occurred at Kibbutz Be’eri, where official records indicated two teenage sisters roughly matching the paramedics description had been killed. “Israeli special forces paramedic describes the aftermath of the brutal rape and execution of Israeli girls in Be’eri during the October 7 Massacre,” Levy tweeted October 25. In a subsequent post, he wrote, “If media want to interview this special forces paramedic about the horrors he saw in the kibbutzim on October 7, drop me a message in my DMs.” When the paramedic was later interviewed on CNN, on November 18, he maintained he had seen the two girls at Kibbutz Be’eri. In his tweet, Levy implied that the paramedic had been to multiple kibbutzim.
By the time Schwartz met the paramedic, the location of the scene was fixed at Be’eri. Schwartz said during her podcast interview that she put extensive effort into trying to confirm the paramedic’s story. “I said, if I want information about the rapes, I have to call the kibbutzim — and nothing,” she said. “No one saw or heard anything.”
Eventually, she reached the unit 669 paramedic, identified in some media interviews as “G.” He relayed the same story he had told other media outlets. Schwartz cited this incident as a central reason she concluded there was organized sexual violence on October 7. “I say, ‘OK, so it happened, one person saw it happen in Be’eri, so it can’t be just one person, because it’s two girls. It’s sisters. It’s in the room. Something about it is systematic, something about it feels to me that it’s not random,” Schwartz concluded on the podcast.
Schwartz does not mention the unnamed neighbors who allegedly saw the two girls alone in the podcast.
It is unclear why the Times did not include the well-publicized statements from the Be’eri girls’ family members. Several of them have done interviews with Israeli media and international newspapers and TV networks, including the BBC, the Daily Mail, and the Daily Telegraph.
The case received significant media attention in the U.K. because Lianne was a British citizen who emigrated to Israel, and her children were dual citizens. The family has also been outspoken in pressuring the British government to put greater effort into freeing Lianne’s husband, Eli Sharabi, the father of the two girls, who is believed to be a hostage in Gaza. The Times article does not mention the fact that there are conflicting details and instead airs the single-sourced assertions offered by the paramedic. If Times reporters had other sources for this story, aside from neighbors who allegedly told the Times the girls were found alone, the readers were not given any indication of it.
On Monday, United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten reported that her team found information indicating sexual violence took place. “In the context of the coordinated attack by Hamas and other armed groups against civilian and military targets throughout the Gaza periphery, the mission team found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred in multiple locations during the 7 October attacks, including rape and gang-rape in at least three locations, namely: the Nova music festival site and its surroundings, Road 232, and Kibbutz Re’im,” the report release said, calling for a full investigation. The special representative wrote, “Overall, the mission team was unable to establish whether sexual violence occurred in kibbutz Be’eri.”
The special representative found two high-profile cases of sexual assault alleged to have happened at Kibbutz Be’eri to be “unfounded.” In its coverage of the U.N. report, the Times sourcing on the alleged assaults in Be’eri moves from a singular first responder to plural, and claims that the sexual assault it identified was a separate incident than the two described by the U.N. “First responders told The New York Times they had found bodies of women with signs of sexual assault at those two kibbutzim, but The Times, in its investigation, did not refer to the specific allegations that the U.N. said were unfounded,” the Times reported. (“The plural ‘first responders’ is accurate,” said the Times spokesperson, without elaborating.)
THE CONTROVERSY AROUND the Times coverage gained momentum last week after X user Zei Squirrel highlighted Schwartz’s social media activity, which included “liking” a post that expressed genocidal incitement against Palestinians in Gaza, calling to “turn the strip into a slaughterhouse.” The Intercept then published excerpts of an interview in which Schwartz offered revelatory details about the Times’s reporting process. For months, independent news outlets such as Mondoweiss, The Grayzone, and Electronic Intifada, as well as the independent research collective October 7 Fact Check, have been documenting a variety of problems with the Times story and highlighting inconsistencies.
On January 5, Laila Al-Arian, an Emmy and Polk Award-winning executive producer for Al Jazeera English, sent an email to New York Times international editor Phil Pan, as well as Jerusalem bureau chief Patrick Kingsley and the Times standards department, posing detailed questions about the veracity of the Times report. She received no response.
Amid mounting public scrutiny, the Times assigned its reporters to effectively re-report their story. The resulting article was published on January 29, and the paper has since maintained it stands by the original report.
Meanwhile, the Times newsroom is facing a serious internal conflict over its coverage of the war against Gaza. Shortly after the December 28 “Screams Without Words” article was published, the paper’s flagship podcast “The Daily” was tasked with converting it into an episode. After a review by producers, the original script, drafted to hew closely to the original article, was shelved, with a more circumspect and caveated script written.
The new script raised problems for the masthead. Running a watered-down version of the article would raise questions as to whether the paper was standing by its reporting amid criticism, including, most prominently, from the family of Gal Abdush. No episode of “The Daily” on the December 28 story has run to date.
The Intercept reported on the internal dispute at the Times in late January. The paper’s masthead responded not by reviewing its reporting, as it did after the debacle over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but instead by launching a highly unusual leak investigation. The Times union denounced the probe this weekend for racially profiling journalists with Middle Eastern and North African backgrounds. The probe, the union said, also focused on journalists who used proper Times channels to critique the reporting, as reporters are encouraged to do.
Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn responded to criticism of the internal probe Saturday in a companywide email, arguing that the leak investigation was proper because the whistleblowers had revealed details about an unpublished episode of “The Daily.” That argument, however, elides the reality that the dispute was not about something the Times did not publish, but rather about something that it did.
“They know better than anyone that leaks are desperate measures when people want to expose grave failures without any safe or efficient internal mechanisms,” said one Times source. “Trying to crush the messenger won’t make the basic fact that the story is a journalism failure go away.”
CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Jeremy Scahill
jeremy.scahill@theintercept.com
@jeremyscahill
on X
Ryan Grim
ryan.grim@theintercept.com
@ryangrim
on X
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After a ccomprehensive analysis of The New York Times article Screams Without Words journalists have discovered that the article totally misrepresents what happened on the 7th of October ’23. But more than that, the NYT was part of a propaganda campaign by the Israeli government and their occupation forces in order to distract from the reality of the Genocide that was occurring on the ground. The NYT made these allegations in order to prolong the genocide and death of Palestinian women children , a huge proportion of the total casualties.
https://youtu.be/BiZzuroQbX0?feature=shared
In the video ‘The Palestinian Delusion‘ both interviewer and guest treat Bible and Koran as historical documents. They are not.
Listen Rabbi Weiss on how Palestinians and Jews have lived together for thousands of years as he denounces Israel’s atrocities in Palestine’s Gaza
https://youtube.com/shorts/uOvP3J3QBtU?feature=shared
This is the region of which Rabbi Weiss speaks – it is called Bilad al-Sham – it existed in this form from the 6th century onwards (changing over time) until the European conquerors came (Richard the Lionheart, and later the Zionist thugs (Hagannah and Stern gangs) that rule the region today.
The video, The Palestinian Delusion: Why Every Middle East Peace Plan Has Failed, and What Must Be Done Instead is a zionist lie.
Ian Curr
19 Jan 2024
Gaza people being shot at as they desperately search for food
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Rh6-Dl-EODk
and begging Egyptian soldiers to save them from starvation (Egypt enforces Israeli siege)
Hmm, the fact remains that the Palestinians have been throwing LGBTQalpahbets off of rooves in Palestine, just as is common across all Islamic nations in the Middle East. So the goal of the “informed left” that want to see an end of the nation state of Israel is actually to end sharing of the lands, replacing such with a far worse hatred. Israel could have wiped the Palestinians off of the earth some 60 years ago just as it could have thrown LGBTQs off of rooves but Israel has NEVER commited either of those attrocities. You modern day Marxists are no better than Stalin and his pogroms so please, cease pretending you hold some moral high ground because you clearly want to make things worse by refusing to acknowledge what creating yet another another Islamic hell-hole will entail.
“South Africa is not free until Palestine is free!” – Nelson Mandela
Alexander,
The claim that Australians kill LGBTQ people is a lie; it was Nazis and Zionists that killed homosexuals during the Second World War. Israel’s and United States’ claims of Hamas ‘beheading and burning babies’ and of using ‘rape as a weapon of war’ is also a lie. Israel is based on a lie. Therefore the western politicians that support Israel are also liars.
LGBTQ organizations world-wide (including in Palestine) have said no to Israeli genocide of the people in Gaza
No matter how much Israel and US lies, the fact is, today (11 January 2024), Israel faces the charge of genocide in the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
Israel is an international pariah, we don’t need an international court to tell us that.
And how the high and mighty politicians like Blinken, Albanese and Wong squirm when challenged about their support for genocide. But not all. Biden has spent 50 years supporting Israel, “Israel’s biggest Catholic supporter” he once boasted, only too happy to support the genocide. Yes, worse than Reagan, worse than the two Bushes, and he a Democrat to boot.
Ian Curr
11 Jan 2023
Nope. Imams regularly order gays and trans be thrown from rooves in Palestine, Iran, Syria, Pakistan etc.
What you’ve done with your weak answer is to deflect from the issue entirely.
Their Prophet Muhammad reportedly said gays “should be thrown from tremendous height then stoned.”
Go look it up in the Hadith if you don’t believe me.
You need to remember that they aren’t following logic or reasoning… and you also need to consider that the most brutally violent followers of strict islamic interpretation ALWAYS rise to the top in Islamic nations.
Now when you have an answer for what their prophet said, get back to me because a handful of Westernized liberal Palestinians isn’t going to change what their religion preaches and practices.
Alexander Powell,
No. The genocide in Gaza is not a religious conflict, it is simply Israeli settlers greed for land in Palestine.
Ian Curr
16 Jan 2024
The article is subtitled ‘This is a story about how mainstream media is covering-up for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.’
So, here I am making mention of the miserable left covering up what Palestinians do to LGBTQalphabets and you don’t want to address it.
You don’t want to address it because YOU KNOW that the inclusive and diverse future Palestine you imagine is NOT the one that actual Palestinians will ever create.
Pot… kettle…black.
Quick now- gather some LGBTQalphabet activists in a Western nation to protest for Palestine in their purple wigs and caked-on make up as that will sooo change Islam.
I can see imamas now across the Middle East proclaiming ‘We were wrong- the gays in New York know more than Mohammed ever did.’
# The left makes everything worse.
Alexander Powell,
Why presume my critique of Israel comes from the ‘Left’ (whatever that is?) or from Western cities like New York, London or Sydney?
Palestinians are the most secular people in Arab culture. They are more concerned with being educated in technical and professional matters than being ruled by religion. Religion is part of their spirit and culture, yes, but only part. There are over 15 million people in the Palestinians diaspora who are citizens of many countries engaged in commerce, science and art.
Arab film makers have long dealt with the issues that you raise, long before your corrupt and precious Hollywood.
You could begin your education of Arab culture by looking at the film ‘The Blue Caftan‘ by Maryam Touzani.
Ian Curr
16 Jan 2024
Oh, so you’re saying the imams, Hamas and Hezbollah are going to read that book and change their ways huh?
You are incredibly naive Ian.
There is no state in the Middle East other than Israel that doesn’t punish gays for being gay.
This is exactly why having any form of discussion with leftists is a TOTAL waste of time.
# The left makes everything worse.
I didn’t mention a book. I was referring to an Israeli newspaper article and a film from Morocco. Perhaps you are not a Zionist, after all, Korazy? Perhaps you are just a mindless computer algorithm? Who else has Israel got going for it now? Lost the war, lost the political struggle.
What about Christian Palestinians? Don’t they get a say? What about the Friends of Sabeel?
Are you saying Christians are anti-gay? Or is it only Christian Arabs that you are saying are anti-gay?
So what about Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, the Director Palestine Museum of Natural History Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University in Occupied Palestine. He’s a christian. His articles appear in these pages. Is your liberated Israel going to allow Professor Qumsiyeh to have a say in Palestine’s future? No? Why not? It is you that is naive, Korazy.
Where do you get this mythical idea that Israel protects gays? Read Israel’s Haaretz: “Israeli Army’s Gay Soldiers Must Stop Persecuting Gay Palestinians”!
Ian Curr
16 Jan 2024
Alexander (Korazy),
Israel is bombing Lebanon. The response from Hassan Nasrallah has been measured, targeting military bases in Israel.
That Islamic leader is Israel’s worse nightmare.
Remember, it was Israel that assassinated his predecessor in 1992.
Nasrallah’s objective is to prevent the fascists in the Likud cabinet doing to Lebanon what the IDF has already done in Gaza, kill the people, and take over the land.
Ian Curr
17 Jan 2024
Dear Alexander, what are “rooves”? I guess English is not your native tongue, where do you live because by the sounds of it it can’t be somewhere nice. Which is a pity and I feel sorry for you. Because it seems as if you have some overblown hatred towards anybody that’s different and you really do need to learn to control that somehow. What people all over the world do to one another since time began is mainly immoral. This is why we have venues like this one to be able to discuss rational constructive ideas and thoughts so that we can change for the better.
A starting point would be with a common language and the understanding that we are manipulated by the media constantly This thing of Jews and Catholics and Protestants, Buddhist, Muslim and Hindus that has been used for so long against us instead of the truth. It is not a religious argument It is materialism in its utmost degree Land – money – power. For so long we were told that the problems in Northern Ireland were between the Catholics and the Protestants we’re now told that in the Middle East it is between the Jews and the Muslims when in both instances it is the the rich against the poor, the weak and downtroddened against the powerful. The powerful are also the ones who control the media. I would just like to end in saying that it’s not the Jews in Palestine that are a problem it’s the Zionists all over the world.
Which is the point that we have to learn to live together with everyone and their different points of view and without violence. True what Hamas did was horrific so what the Zionists are doing now isn’t?
Ha ha ha. I rarely come across such ignorance- not even the regular Harry Potter socialists at the Fabian Society with their belief in magic can match your reply for being absolutely bat_hit crazy. Well done- you have a future at CNN.
Thank you SupportSanity.
All that US/Israel talk about terrorists driving Israelis into the sea was ‘hasbara’ (lies).
The history of the past 75 years demonstrate that Israel has been driving Palestinians into the sea.
Ian
12 Jan 2024
Steph,
I am for the facts, not speculation. Remember the Iraq war was based on a lie. Shin Bet collected ‘evidence’ on 7 October. This organisation is neither independent nor is it trustworthy. It is a murderous arm of the Israeli Occupation forces that tortures it captives. Just ask Mordechai Vanunu, who was drugged and abducted from Italy by Shin Bet and subsequently suffered cruel and barbaric treatment whilst in an Israeli prison. Why? Because he exposed Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
The videos from 7 Oct are inconclusive and do not support your allegation that Hamas “weaponized sexual violence”; some of the pictures give context however we still don’t know who is shooting at whom in the videos from 7 October or who was responsible for the violence. Some people on the scene soon after claim that violence and destruction of the houses were by third parties, people who had escaped Gaza, a concentration camp that was victim of 5 bloody invasions and bombing by Israel in the past 16 years.
Israel has suppressed witness statements and, on its own admission, did not conduct autopsies, a basic requirement for understanding what happened on that day. How can 1200 people be killed, and yet there are no autopsies?!
Israel refuses to co-operate with the UN Commission of Inquiry’s probe of allegations of sexual crimes on 7 October 2023. We do have evidence from Israelis in the kibbutz that the IDF shot at residents. The military say they used helicopters and artillery to shoot at houses and cars of residents and ‘rave’ goers.
Taking what you have said point by point.
1. The Kibbutzim at Be’eri was a privatised and wealthy armed camp with its own defences. The settlers at Be’eri took up arms against the attackers from the al Quassam brigade; so, of course, there was a fire fight between the two militia groups, Be-eri settlers on one hand and al Quassam brigades on the other.
2. The majority of those killed and those captured were reservists in the Israeli occupation army, some were senior officers in the Israeli Occupation forces, most of the civilians have been released, some of the women prisoners stating that they were well treated by the resistance fighters.
3. Camp David was a sham. No two-state-solution was ever contemplated by Israel’s government, then or now. Remember it was an extremist egged on by Netanyahu that assassinated Israel’s Prime Minister, Yitshak Rabin*, after Rabin agreed to the Oslo Peace accords. Rabin was a product of the Kibbutz movement and fought in the terrorist Hagannah militia in 1948. when it drove out the Palestinians during al Nakba.
You accuse me of victim blaming, but then you celebrate the death of Saleh al-Arouri murdered by Shin Bet with his countrymen in Beirut. This was an attack on the sovereignty of Lebanon and a terrorist act authorised by an Israeli Defence Minister who is threatening to make Beirut like Gaza.
*It was Shin Bet that failed to protect the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. It was a Shin Bet agent-informer who was either an accomplice to the murder or knew of the planned assassination beforehand and did nothing. The murder of Rabin occurred in 1995 after he tried to make peace with the Palestinians.
Ian Curr
4 Jan 2023
It’s very funny how you avoided addressing the one point I asked you to address directly. As a reminder, that point was the countless videos TAKEN BY HAMAS of their soldiers slaughtering random civvies. Videos of cars being shot up and terrified Israelis being gunned down while fleeing for their lives or hiding in their homes. Are you going to actually address this, you snake? Have some conviction; say it with your chest.
I’m not sure why you put “weaponized sexual violence” in quotes, as I never used that phrase. Do you contend that all the reports of survivors of this terrorist attack are lying about their experiences? All the women who suffered and watched their friends and family suffer sexual violence at the hands of these evil terrorists, they’re all lying? You’d have to be knowingly lying or very bought into a retarded narrative to come to that conclusion. But, that’s the standard state of mind for a leftist, I suppose.
I’m not sure what al-Arouri’s assassination has to do with victim blaming. That’s a weird non sequitur on your part. As a senior hamas military leader, he almost certainly was involved with planning October 7. That makes him obviously liable for those atrocities, i.e. not a blameless victim. Though, I suppose since you seem to think that the entire thing was a false flag operation conducted by Israel (those sneaky Jews, am I right?), he must not have done anything wrong.
OF COURSE a large number of those slaughtered were reservists. That’s what happens when you have mandatory military service followed by reservist status. Does some dude who operated a radio for a few year deserve to die at the hands of Islamist extremists 15 years after his last time setting foot on a military base? That seems to be the implication of your comment. To which I say, it’s a bummer it was them and not you. I have no tolerance for terrorist apologia. Remember, this is the group that straps bombs to children and points them at a neighboring state. Neither side is without fault, but only one side carries out suicide bombing attacks against soft targets as a matter of policy.
Long live Israel! Eradicate Hamas. Free Palestinians from their Islamist oppressors. What is needed is a post-WW2 Japan or Germany-style occupation to transform the region. It’s a very tall order given the attitudes of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, but I don’t see what choice there is. The alternative is for them to continue to languish in squalor with outdated genocidal beliefs. These must be stamped out. It’s just not compatible with peace or a flourishing state. If Nazi Germany can be redeemed, then I hope the Palestinians in these regions can be as well. Until that happens, occupation is not only justified, but necessary to maintain security for those who these terrorists would love nothing more than to seek out and destroy behind every rock and tree.
The allegations hinged on the story of Gal Abdush. But the Abdush family says there is no proof she was raped, and that Times reporters interviewed them under false pretences. – Mondoweiss.
According to former US weapons expert and former NBC employee, Scott Ritter, Israel has forfeited its right to exist because of the genocide it has committed in Gaza.
Max Blumenthal and other independent journalists expose the lie of mass rape by Hamas on 7 October.
Military and weapons expert, Scott Ritter, says that eighty percent (80%) of the people at the rave festival were killed by Israeli military not by the Palestinian resistance.
Ritter says that one third of the people killed were Israeli military. Many Israeli Occupation Forces were captured by al Qassam. According to Ritter and Ramzy Baroud, Israel is losing the war on the ground and is taking a lot of casualties. Israeli doctors treating Israeli soldiers back this up.
In the international sphere, the Palestinian resistance has been winning because of the strength of its people and worldwide support.
My answer is much of the media consumed in the United States is ‘owned’ by AIPAC (Israel’s lobby in the US) that boasts that they determine how the US congress votes.
Ian Curr
16 Jan 2024
One thing is true, the muslims and the communists are unified in their support of a free Palestine.
Put another way, who would have thought it would be the Zionists who put Muslims and Communists in the same room?
October 7 was an epic failure by Israel to protect settlers and foreign nationals at a Rave concert.
1. The Israeli government lost sight of its primary objective: the security of its occupation wall around Gaza.
2. Israeli Occupation Forces showed contempt for human life by ordering Apache Helicopters to fire on settlers, foreign nationals (mainly American) and highly organised Palestinian resistance fighters.
3. Israel compounded these mistakes by allowing the Gazan resistance to take captive its military commanders and their computers from a nearby base. US Military and weapons expert, Scott Ritter, says that one third of the people killed were Israeli military.
4. Rather than address these failures by the IDF, Israeli leaders lied to a lame duck US President who repeated their calumny to a quisling foreign press (= one who collaborates with an occupying force for personal gain).
Finally a moribund Israeli government told the world of his long held intention to make genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Ian Curr
16 Jan 2024
Steph,
It has become increasingly clear that the Israeli government intends to drive Palestinians out of Gaza. That is both immoral and illegal, so do not lecture ‘leftists’ about morality. Israeli genocide of Palestinians is immoral and illegal. So too was the holocaust. I am relying on the words of an Italian jew and survivor of the holocaust, Primo Levi, in my comments on genocide then by Germany and now by Israel. I think Israel’s genocide of Gaza is a betrayal of the holocaust.
You need to look at our guidelines for comments on WBT. We monitor this site for factual errors. If readers see errors please email the editor or place a correction in a comment box.
For example I did not say what you claim in your comment: “it (the events of 7 Oct) was fabricated by the Israeli government, but even if it wasn’t, they deserved it anyway.”
What I said was that people need an independent investigation of what happened in the occupied territories on 7 October 2023.
We don’t know what happened on that day except to say Israel did not protect their own citizens. Witness statements from Israeli pilots and the armed defence inside the Kibbutz say that people at the festival were fired upon by Palestinian resistance and the Israeli Occupation Forces. Israeli aircraft and armoured units (tanks) fired shells at cars at the festival and houses inside the kibbutz. These statements are evidence that an investigation team should not ignore.
Did the people at the festival deserve to be murdered by friendly fire? Certainly not.
I can not understand the evidence given by Israeli and foreign nationals (mainly US citizens) who were at the festival. To organise and conduct a rave festival only kilometers away from a concentration camp under siege by Israeli occupation forces for 16 years makes no sense to me. Especially given the celebrations by Israelis in that neighbourhood when Palestinians were frequently bombed and killed by the IDF during that period. What mindset or morality could make Israelis behave in such a manner?
What I am saying is that no Israeli citizen be they Arab, Christian, or Jewish deserves the murderous and genocidal government of Israel.
Israel is the greatest cause of anti-antisemitism in the world in the same way ISIS is the greatest cause of Islamophobia. Be mindful Hamas is not ISIS despite repeated statements to that effect by Netanyahu and Biden. Hamas is just one part of the Palestinian resistance to the occupation of their homeland. They are a political movement that has a military arm, al-Qassam Brigades, that conducted the attacks (possibly with others) on 7 October.
Hamas’ tactical plan on 7 October was simple: Take hostages and await IDF attempts to retrieve them.
Their political strategy was also simple: place the need for a Palestinian state back on the agenda – something the world had forgotten or ignored.
Hamas may not win the military battle against overwhelming force by Israel but they may win the political battle because even the elites in Washington, London, Paris and Riyadh are now talking about the need for a Palestinian state.
End the occupation, end the siege of Gaza!
Ian Curr
3 Jan 2024
We don’t know what happened on October 7? Why do you just go online and write lies? Sure, perhaps there hasn’t been a precise public accounting for every single death, but that’s really immaterial to the issue. What is known for certain is that over a thousand Israelis were slaughtered in a large terrorist attack. The majority were civilians. Whether it was 1200, 1300, or 1400 doesn’t really matter to the point. You’re also lying about the intentions of Hamas. If the aim was merely to take hostages, why are there countless videos recorded BY HAMAS THEMSELVES of them gunning down people running away and hunting them down in their homes? What do you say about this? Address this directly and without rambling (though I know how hard that is for leftists).
It’s very ironic to claim that world powers forgot about the plight of the Palestinian people. What about Camp David? The fact is, there was a very sensible deal on the table, and Arafat backed out and kicked off the Second Intifada. It’s hard to negotiate between two parties when one has EXPICITLY genocidal aspirations towards the other.
You may notice I’ve made no statement of support for government of Israel. I’m not a fan personally. In particular, I think their stance on West Bank settlers ought to be reversed. That is, instead of backing them, they should be prosecuting.
And again, you engage in more victim blaming. So, the ravers deserved to be slaughtered because of where it was held…? Please, expand on this. I dare you. Demonstrate how this is anything other than victim blaming.
🥳 al-Arouri in the dirt 🥳
Holy shit, you’re a disgusting apologist for rape and murder. There is no excuse for the violence against civilians that occurred on October 7. If you have any problem with that statement, you should kill yourself.
Steph,
You’ve missed the point. I can’t thank you for your comment because you have not understood what I wrote. I will assume you are a thinking human being, not a robot.
What I wrote was: “However if the Israeli allegations (about 7 October) are true or partly true, the authors show very little understanding of the reasons for violence.”
The reason for the violence by the Palestinian resistance is Israel’s occupation and siege of Gaza.
What is needed is an independent investigation into all the allegations of what happened on 7 October 2023, not Israeli hasbara, repeated endlessly by your President on your media in the US.
“Since October 7, the Israeli military has slaughtered more than 21,000 Palestinians in Gaza, among them at least 8,663 children. According to Healthcare Workers Watch – Palestine, an independent monitoring initiative co-launched by Texas doctor Osaid Alser, no fewer than 340 healthcare workers were killed by the Israelis between October 7 and December 19, including 118 doctors and 104 nurses.”– Belén Fernández @ https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/29/the-real-person-of-the-year
Of course, the government of Israel does not want an independent investigation because of its complicity in the murder of its own citizens and in its failure to look after them and prevent their capture. That is part of the reason why so many Israelis are out on the streets of Tel Aviv calling for Netanyahu to resign. Netanyahu’s popularity rating in Israel is about 6%.
Nor does the Israeli government really want all the captives in Gaza released; if it did, there would be a ceasefire and an exchange of prisoners. Don’t forget, there is credible evidence of the torture of thousands of Palestinian prisoners (many of them, children) taken captive, without proper legal process, by Israeli soldiers into ‘administrative detention‘ both before and after 7 October 2023.
Your government, the United States, is complicit in preventing a ceasefire; and therefore as guilty as Israel of the ‘on air’ genocide that is unfolding in Gaza.
Ian Curr
2 Jan 2024
An excellent level headed logical response to an manic statement by someone not really in control. Maybe he too is in the Zionist government that controls Israel at the moment.
What happened on Oct.7 is an excellent example of what violence begets and there is no way any sane person could condone that. However the response by the Israelis shows that they seem to have learned the wrong lesson from the Nazis.
Thanks for your comments, Stephen Z. We don’t really know what happened on 7 October. As Primo Levy, a survivor of the holocaust, wrote the contemporary history of the Third Reich,could be: “reread as a war against memory, an Orwellian falsification of memory, falsification of reality, negation of reality.” He wonders if “we who have returned” have “been able to understand and make others understand our experience.” – Chris Hedges in Israel’s Genocide Betrays the Holocaust.
Recently there was a folk festival near Brisbane, held at Woodford, probably not that different to the rave that was attacked on 7 October at Kibbutz Be’eri. One difference is that, at Woodford festival, there is acknowledgement of the dispossession of aboriginal people, something that was lacking at the rave festival at the kibbutz in the occupied territories.
Some remember it as the Maleny Folk Festival. Like the organisers rave festival in the kibbutz Be’eri, the organisers at Woodford do not seem to have learned the political lessons of the past. Nor can they see that the Israeli government wants to be like Australia with the indigenous population ethnically cleansed so that the Palestinian people make up only a small percentage of the population (In Australia it is about 3%). … see https://workersbushtelegraph.com.au/2023/12/28/staunch-action-by-justice-for-palestine-at-woodford/
I hope you are well,
Ian
It’s really incredible how leftists manage to trip over even the lowest hurdles of morality. I say “it is bad that innocent people were raped and slaughtered,” and you say “it was fabricated by the Israeli government, but even if it wasn’t, they deserved it anyway.” I’d say it’s appalling, but I’m not surprised by the savagery of leftists at this point. It’s simply a mask-off moment for delusional bloodthirsty freaks.
Why do you hate Jews? If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say perhaps it’s due to their overrepresentation in the capitalist class, but I do not know.
It’s… odd… to blame the lack of ceasefire on Israel when this conflict was sparked by Hamas’s attack (i.e. breaking a ceasefire, though they shooting hundreds rockets into Israel every year, so calling the state of affairs before October 7 a ceasefire is a misnomer). The fact is, neither side really wants a ceasefire. It’s only outside observers that call for one en masse. I invite you to familiarize yourself with the feelings of Palestinians: https://www.awrad.org/files/server/polls/polls2023/Public%20Opinion%20Poll%20-%20Gaza%20War%202023%20-%20Tables%20of%20Results.pdf.
Hamas ought to be destroyed. It is only when the innocents within Gaza are freed from their oppressive Islamist government that a peaceful future can begin to be possible.