442702
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Biden-Harris have spent $22.76 billion to support Israel's genocide
URL: https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/18/october-in-gaza-one-year-later/
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OCTOBER 18, 2024 Israel Unbound: October in Gaza, One Year Later JEFFREY ST. CLAIR Netanyahu takes a selfie with US troops in Israel. Image: Screenshot from video on X. A retaliatory military operation that many wizened pundits predicted would last no more than a month or so has now thundered on in ever-escalating episodes of violence and mass destruction for a year with no sign of relenting. What began as a war of vengeance has become a war of annihilation, not just of Hamas, but of Palestinian life and culture in Gaza and beyond. While few took them seriously at the time, Israeli leaders spelled out in explicit terms the savage goals of their war and the unrestrained means they were going to use to prosecute it. This was going to be a campaign of collective punishment where every conceivable target–school, hospital, mosque–would be fair game. Here was Israel unbound. The old rules of war and international law were not only going to be ignored; they would be ridiculed and mocked by the Israeli leadership, which, in the days after the October 7 attacks, announced their intention to immiserate, starve, and displace more than 2 million Palestinians and kill anyone who stood in their way–man, woman or child. For the last 17 years, the people of Gaza have been living a marginal existence, laboring under the cruel constrictions of a crushing Israeli embargo, where the daily allotments of food allowed into the Strip were measured out down to the calorie. Now, the blockade was about to become total. On October 9, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, food, or fuel; everything is closed.” He wasn’t kidding. These are the same Palestinians in Gaza who, for years, have functioned as Israel’s low-wage labor force. As one Palestinian laborer from Rafah told Amira Hass after an Israeli bombardment in 2004: “We Palestinians build your homes in Israel, now Israel comes and destroys ours.” After October 7, thousands of Palestinian workers in Israel were detained without warrants by Israeli forces and kept for weeks in torturous conditions. This time, Israel wouldn’t just destroy Palestinian houses; it was going to obliterate entire cities. Israel didn’t hide its intentions to traduce 75 years of international law when its missiles, drones and quadcopters began blowing up apartment buildings, houses, markets, hospitals, schools, mosques, water treatment plants, pipelines, libraries, universities, UN buildings, media offices, aid convoys and tent cities. Israel’s own soldiers and commanding officers posted videos of these war crimes on social media platforms, including one funded by the press office of the IDF. The Netanyahu regime often gave a more unvarnished account of the horrors they were inflicting on Gaza than you’d find in the pages of the New York Times or broadcasts from the BBC. For the past year, Israel has acted as if the disaster of October 7, when the Israeli government ignored repeated warnings that an attack was imminent, gave it impunity to commit atrocities on a much vaster scale, using remote- controlled weapons and AI targeting against an essentially defenseless civilian population, allowing it to blow up whatever targets it wanted at will with little fear of reprisals or legal consequences. Israel had good reason to indulge in this sadistic arrogance. Its principal weapons dealer has continued to rush shipment after shipment of bombs, missiles and artillery shells to Israel, ensuring that the stockpiles of its arsenal remain full, even though by March Israel had already dropped 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, more than the World War II bombings in Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined. The pace of the bombing (and the resupplies) has accelerated since then. According to a damage assessment from UNOSAT in early September, Israeli airstrikes, bombs, artillery and bulldozers have damaged 163,778 buildings in the Gaza Strip, around 66% of structures in Gaza. Of these, 78% were completely destroyed or severely or moderately damaged. Among the damaged buildings are at least 227,591 housing units, leaving much of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million people seeking shelter in UN schools or tent camps. The ruins of these bombed structures have left behind more than 42 million tons of debris, some of it toxic, much of it covering human remains, that will take at least 14 years to clean up. Satellite imagery collected by the UN on September 6 shows that at least 87 percent of school buildings in the Gaza Strip (493 out of 564) have been destroyed or damaged by Israeli airstrikes. Fifty-five percent of these schools (273) are government schools, a third (161) are UNRWA schools, and 12 percent (59) are private schools. Before the Israeli assault, these destroyed or damaged schools served about 541,227 students and employed more than 20,222 teachers. Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli military has issued over 65 evacuation orders, including five since 1 October 2024. As a result, around 84 percent of the Gaza Strip remains under evacuation orders, more than a year after the war began. The new orders issued for October cover about 70 square kilometers, or 19 percent of the Strip, including areas where Palestinians had been ordered to evacuate multiple times. According to a UN estimate, at least 75,000 people have been displaced over the past ten days, mainly within the north. The new orders applied to tens of critical service facilities, including 16 healthcare facilities, dozens of water, sanitation and hygiene facilities, 28 schools sheltering refugees, and one bakery. Since October 7, Israel has made 516 attacks on healthcare sites across Gaza. Israel has attacked UNRWA facilities, aid workers and aid convoys more than 464 times, killing 228 UN workers and damaging 190 UN facilities in Gaza. Only seven of UNRWA’s 17 medical clinics remain operational. South Africa saw this for what it was: a genocide in the making. On December 29, it filed an 84-page petition with the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and requesting that the Court issue provisional measures of protection. Biden, who ordered his UN ambassador to veto several ceasefire resolutions passed by the Security Council, denounced South Africa’s petition as “meritless.” On January 26, the Court ruled that it had found “that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible” and ordered Israel “to take measures to prevent acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip; to prevent and punish incitement to genocide; to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza; and generally, to take more measures to protect Palestinian civilians.” Since the ICC ruling, Israel has killed at least another 16,000 Palestinians in Gaza, constricted the flow of humanitarian aid and food into the Strip and routinely bombed areas Israel itself had instructed Palestinians to relocate into. The few rhetorical red lines the Biden-Harris administration drew, Israel almost immediately crossed with no lull in the flow of weapons. “Every time Israel escalates the war, Biden rushes in to protect Israel from the consequences of its own escalation,” says Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute. “That is not a strategy to prevent escalation; that is a strategy that fuels escalation.” Biden not only protected Israel from the UN, but, more cravenly, he shielded Israel from damning findings made by his own administration. In April, the State Department’s Refugee Bureau and officials at the US Agency for International Development determined that Israel was deliberately blocking aid into Gaza, a finding that should have triggered the Leahy Act, which bans military assistance to countries that block American humanitarian aid. Yet Biden and Blinken buried the reports and falsely told Congress that Israel was not in violation of the law, allowing the weapons to continue streaming to Israel, even as it laid waste to Rafah in an operation Biden timorously told Netanyahu to scale down. Palestinian refugees tent in flames after Israeli airstrikes near Al Aqsa Hospital. Photo: UNRWA. According to Brown University’s Cost of War project, since October 7, the Biden-Harris Administration has spent $22.76 billion to support Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza. This figure includes $17.9 billion in direct “security” aid to Israel (more than in any other year since the US began giving Israel military assistance in 1959) and $4.86 billion to support US military operations in the region. The grotesque consequences in human terms have become almost numbingly familiar by now. After a year of unrelenting attacks on Gaza, the official death toll from the Palestinian Health Ministry stands at more than 42,065 Palestinians killed and 97,886 wounded. At least 32,280 of the dead have been identified, including 10,627 children, 5,956 women, and 2,770 elderly. At least another 10,000 Palestinians are estimated to be buried under the rubble. At least 3,100 Palestinian children under the age of five have been killed in Gaza, 700 of them were killed before their first birthday. The actual death toll, according to estimates from medical investigators at Lancet and elsewhere, probably exceeds 200,000 and is perhaps much higher. A study by Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins of Bard College found that as many as 67,000 Gazans may have already died of starvation since the start of the war. The Israelis have forced the children of Gaza to exist on only 245 calories per day, which is literally a starvation diet. The leadership of Hamas has been decimated, including the apparent death of Sinwar. Two-thirds of the population of Gaza has been displaced. Polio and other infectious diseases are spreading through the surviving population. Palestinians have been without reliable supplies of clean water, power, fuel, medicine and food for a year. Children haven’t been to school since last October. And yet the killing, maiming and destruction goes on, almost unabated, under the risible rationale of “self-defense.” In recent weeks, the slaughter has even escalated, especially in North Gaza, where the Netanyahu regime appears intent on implementing the so-called “General’s Plan,” a genocidal scheme to drive as many as 400,000 weary, homeless and starving Palestinians southward so that Israel can permanently seize much of the northern reaches of the Strip. Here’s a summary of what’s happened in Gaza in the days since the anniversary of the October 7 attacks. + Israel’s latest siege on the northern Gaza Strip and its new offensive on Jabalia began two weeks after Netanyahu announced to Israeli lawmakers that he was considering a plan put forward by several Israeli generals — known as the “Generals’ Plan” — aiming at emptying the north of the Gaza Strip of Palestinians by making the area uninhabitable. At least 350 Palestinians have already been killed in the area in the last ten days. According to Muhannad Hadi, Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory: “In the past two weeks, over 50,000 people have been displaced from the Jabalya area, which is cut off, while others remain stranded in their homes amid increased bombardment and fighting. A military siege that deprives civilians of essential means of survival is unacceptable.” + As of mid-October, no humanitarian food assistance had entered northern Gaza in two weeks. Israel had closed all the crossings, forcing kitchens, bakeries and food distribution points in the North Gaza governorate to shut down, in an area where at least three-quarters of the population rely on food aid to survive. + On October 13, five bakeries in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis were forced to close due to the shortage of flour. Already in September, about 1.4 million people ( nearly 70 percent of the total population) failed to receive their monthly food rations, which comprised pasta, rice, oil, and canned meats. If the flow of assistance does not immediately resume, almost two million people will lose this vital aid in October. According to the World Food Program, “People have run out of ways to cope, food systems have collapsed, and the risk of famine is real.” + During the first half of October, Israel killed another two journalists and wounded three others in Gaza. On October 6, a Palestinian journalist and freelance photographer was killed by a missile fired from an Israeli drone and another journalist was killed and one injured when an Israeli drone fired at a TV crew covering Israeli forces operations in the Jabalya refugee camp. Between October 7, 2023, and October 10, 2024, 168 Palestinian journalists and media workers were killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces or missiles, including 17 women. At least 360 have been injured and another 60 have been detained. + All three of the hospitals in North Gaza – Kamal Adwan, Al Awda and the Indonesian Hospital – are operating at minimum capacity and experiencing critical shortages of fuel, blood, trauma equipment, and medications. In total, 285 patients remain in these facilities, including eight children and five adults receiving mechanical ventilation in ICUs and 161 patients in emergency departments. Many patients urgently need advanced procedures, such as neurosurgery and vascular surgery, that can’t be conducted under current conditions. + The Kamal Adwan Hospital continues to be overwhelmed, receiving at least 50-70 newly injured patients daily. While emergency obstetric care continues to be provided at Kamal Adwan and Al Awda, “the lives of newborns in incubators and women with pregnancy complications are hanging by a thread,” according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). The UNFP report emphasizes that more than 9,000 pregnant women have been forced to move multiple times due to the latest evacuation orders. Meanwhile, none of the 25 primary healthcare centers in North Gaza are functional, and only five out of 15 medical clinics that had been operating in recent months continue to provide primary care. + On the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, after Israeli airstrikes hit a mosque and a school in Deir al Balah, Al Aqsa Hospital received 53 wounded patients and 22 dead bodies. According to doctors with Médecins Sans Frontières MSF, many patients suffered injuries to the head, thorax and abdomen, Several of the wounded had to be treated on the floor due to the shortage of beds. + Around three in the afternoon that same day, 13 Palestinians were killed and others injured when Israeli airstrikes targeted a group of people standing near a gas station in the Jabalya refugee camp in North Gaza. + Nine hours later, Israel bombed a house on Block 10 of Al Bureij refugee camp in Deir al Balah, killing 19 Palestinians, including nine women and five children. + On October 7, at about 3 PM, 10 Palestinians, including four women and three children, were killed when an Israeli missile struck a house in the Al Atatrah neighborhood in northeastern Rafah + In the early morning hours of October 9, nine Palestinians were killed and five others injured when Israel bombed a house in the Ash Shujai’yeh neighborhood in eastern Gaza City. + A few hours later, an Israeli airstrike targeted the Al Yaman As Saeed Hospital, where Palestinian refugees were sheltering. According to the UN Human Rights Office, the strike killed 17 people. + At 11:30 in the morning on October 10, Israel bombed the Rufaydah school west of Deir Al Balah, which was sheltering thousands of Palestinian refugees. At least 28 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed and more than 54 were injured, including five critically injured children. + Half an hour later that day, eight Palestinians were killed and a dozen others injured when they were shot in the back by Israeli quadcopters while trying to evacuate from the Jabalya refugee camp through the Abu Sharakh roundabout. + Shortly after 9 PM on October 11, 22 Palestinians, including several women and children, were killed and 90 others injured when Israeli airstrikes leveled several houses on a residential block in Jabalya Al Balad, in North Gaza. + At four in the afternoon on October 12, Israel targeted a house on Al Yafawi Street in the Jabalya refugee camp in North Gaza, killing nine Palestinians and injuring ten others. + Near 10:30 at night on October 12, Israel bombed a house in An Nuseirat refugee camp in Deir al Balah, killing eight Palestinians and wounding several others. + At 4:30 in the afternoon on October 13, five Palestinian children were killed and several others injured when an Israeli airstrike hit a group of Palestinian children while they were playing at a kindergarten in As Shati’ camp, west of Gaza City. + Seven hours later, 36 Palestinians, including 15 children, were killed and 80 others injured when Israeli artillery shelled the Al Mufti UNRWA school in An Nuseirat refugee camp, where over 6,200 displaced people were sheltering. According to UNRWA, the school was going to be used as a Polio vaccination site the following day. + At about 10 in the morning on October 14, ten Palestinians were killed, and 40 others were injured when an Israeli airstrike hit outside theUNRWA distribution center in Jabalya refugee camp. According to UNRWA, this happened while people waited to collect food and flour. + At 1:20 in the morning on 14 October, Israeli drones opened fire on the courtyard of Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah, where displaced Palestinians were sheltering. The attack ignited a fire that quickly engulfed dozens of tents, killing at least four Palestinians and burning several patients alive in their hospital beds as they writhed in pain, many of them still attached to IVs. Several Palestinians tried to put out the fire. One of the survivors told a reporter with Al Jazeera: “We woke up to the sound of the strike, which blew away 40 tents. We spent the whole night transporting the injured. People were burned, and some were melted. People came here from everywhere, escaping death, but we came to a second death. Without tents or cover, what will people do now? Winter is coming. Where shall we go?” + At least four people were burned to death and more than 40 others were injured, including women and children. Médecins sans Frontières reported that Al Aqsa Hospital treated 40 patients, including ten children and eight women, many of whom had severe burns. Another 25 patients had to be referred to other health facilities due to the lack of capacity at Al Aqsa, which a few hours earlier had already received dozens of people injured in the strike on the Al Mufti school. According to an assessment by UN agencies, out of the hundreds of displaced families sheltering in the courtyard, some 40 families were affected, half of whom lost their shelter and other belongings in the fire. Referring to these incidents, Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Ms. Joyce Msuya, stated: “There seems to be no end to the horrors that Palestinians in Gaza are forced to endure… There really is no safe place in Gaza for people to go. Fighting is intensifying in the north and essential supplies for survival are running out… These atrocities must end. Civilians and civilian infrastructure must always be protected.” + In Jabalia in northern Gaza, where Israeli forces continued their latest ground offensive for the tenth day in a row, Israeli quadcopter drones opened fire on Palestinians who had gathered to receive food at a UNRWA aid distribution center, killing at least ten people and wounding more than 40 others. + On Wednesday, the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia issued an urgent call for medical supplies and generator fuel. The hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in the strip, warned that the amount of fuel that could enter the area was only enough for ten more days. + On October 15, the family home of a Virginia man of Palestinian descent was destroyed in repeated airstrikes by Israeli forces in the Jabalyia refugee camp in northern Gaza. There were 15 people in the house when it was struck, including seven children and the man’s mother, a lawful permanent resident of the United States. The man’s mother and several relatives survived the initial attack but were trapped beneath the rubble of the house. In an effort to rescue the injured, the family called the Israeli authorities, gave them the address and GPS coordinates of the bombed house, and let them know that an ambulance had been dispatched to the scene. Instead of clearing the route for the rescuers, the IDF apparently used the information provided by the family to launch a second round of airstrikes, targeting both the ruins of the house and the ambulance coming to the aid of the wounded. The Israeli missile that hit the ambulance killed Dr. Ahmed Al-Najjar. The missile that struck the already bombed residence killed everyone except a seven-year-old boy. When Americans are attacked, Biden vowed, we will respond…with condolences and more 2,000-lb bombs. + As I was writing this column, word came of an Israeli airstrike on yet another UNRWA school being used as a shelter in North Gaza. The bombing of the Abu Hussein School in Jabalia refugee camp on Thursday killed at least 28 Palestinians (and likely many more) and injured at least 160 people, including many women and children. Once again, the airstrikes ignited the tents where thousands of Palestinian families were sheltering. Al Jazeera journalist Hani Mahmoud reported that the victims were taken on carts and private cars to Al Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals, already overflowing with patients and running low on fuel and supplies. “The scene is horrific, Mahmoud reported. “They can’t keep up with the large influx of casualties.” A UN official in northern Gaza on October 10, 2024. Photo by OCHA. +++ The war of revenge has become a war of dispossession, conquest and annexation, where war crime feeds on war crime. Not even the lives of the Israeli hostages will stand in the way; they will become Israeli martyrs in the cause of cleansing Gaza of Palestinians. There can be little doubt now that this is the ultimate exterminationist goal. Smotrich and Ben Gvir have openly said as much and Netanyahu and Gallant have put their incendiary rhetoric into ruinous action. (This week, Netanyahu’s Likud government circulated invitations to an event called “Preparing to Settle Gaza.”) Even Benny Gantz, hailed as an enlightened alternative to Netanyahu by many in the West, proclaimed after learning of Sinwar’s death: “The circle is closed, but the mission is not over. The IDF will continue to operate in the Gaza Strip for years to come.” It’s equally apparent that nothing Israel does, including killing American grandmothers, college students, and aid workers, will trigger the US government, whether it’s under the control of Biden, Harris, or Trump, to intervene to stop them or even pull the plug on the arms shipments that make this genocidal war possible. This week, Biden, while his secretaries of State and Defense publicly waged their fingers on Netanyahu for continuing to starve Palestinians, ordered US troops to Israel to operate the THAAD missile defense system he had just gifted them. Shortly after they arrived, Netanyahu took a gloating selfie with the fresh-faced US troops who had now officially placed their boots on the ground in Israel’s ever-widening war. Sources Linda Bilmes, William Hartung, Stephen Semler, United States Spending on Israel’s Military Operations and Related Operations in the Region, Costs of War Project, September 30, 2024. Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee, Salim Yusuf, Counting the Dead in Gaza: Difficult But Essential, The Lancet, July 20, 2024. Adam Taylor, Leo Sands, Kelly Kasulis Cho, and Adela Suliman, “What to Know About US Support for Israel After a Year of War,” Washington Post, Oct. 14, 2024. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, “2oo Days of Military Attacks on Gaza,” April 24, 2024. UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Reported Impact Snapshot (Gaza), October 16, 2024. UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Humanitarian Situation Update #229, Gaza Strip, October 15, 2024. World Food Program, “New Gaza Food Security Assessment Sees Famine Risk Persisting Amid Ongoing Fighting and Restricted Aid Operations,” October 17, 2024. Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents (with Alexander Cockburn). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter @JeffreyStClair3. |
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[442786] [442709] [442784] [442737] [442714] [442716] [442717] [442733] [442710] [442704] [442703] [442718] [442763] [442767] [442770] [442773] [442706] [442762] [442769] [442779] [442780] [442713] [442730] [442707]
442786
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Your tax dollars at work(NT)
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None
442709
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Biden-Harris have spent $22.76 billion to resist IRAN
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Do not think that Hamas has acted for benefit of anyone except Iran. You have offered no suggestion as to how to destroy an enemy in an embedded population. Historically, the numbers in Gaza are less than typically found in such situations, which is why Israel claims just that. ......... Tehran Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Oct 19 that Hamas was alive and will survive despite the death of its leader Yahya Sinwar in an Israeli military operation in Gaza. “His loss is certainly painful for the resistance front” against Israel, “but it will not end at all with the martyrdom of Sinwar”, Mr Khamenei said. The Palestinian Islamist movement “Hamas is alive and will remain alive”, he said in a statement. Sinwar “was the shining figure of resistance and struggle”, Mr Khamenei said in his first remarks on Sinwar – seen as the mastermind of the Oct 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that sparked the Gaza war – since Sinwar was killed on Oct 16. “He stood with unwavering determination against the cruel and aggressive enemy and slapped them with tact and courage,” he added. “He left behind the irreparable blow of Oct 7, 2023, as his legacy in the history of this region, and then he soared with honour and pride to the ascension of the martyrs.” Iran does not recognise Israel, its sworn enemy, and has made its support for the Palestinian cause one of the pillars of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Sinwar, long a man in the shadows, took over as head of Hamas after the killing in July of its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in the Iranian capital of Tehran. The killing has been widely blamed on Israel, which has never claimed responsibility |
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[442784] [442737] [442714] [442716] [442717] [442733] [442710]
442784
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: ignore, spin, deflect, scapegoat and blame...(NT)
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442737
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: "Israel says its forces have killed Hamas leader Yahya...
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Lost? Really? And just why is that? Because your relentless propaganda is ineffective? Or because I thought Sinwar was a murdering terrorist who would come to no other end. Live by the sword... He had other choices, as do you still. |
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442714
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Biden-Harris have spent $22.76 billion to resist IRAN
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Mitra? Can I just say to you that, along with one or two rare others here, I see you as having the patience of a saint? ;) Qualities we see in others we know we do not possess ourselves really shine for us… Thank you for modeling it so naturally… ;) |
442716
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Biden-Harris have spent $22.76 billion to resist IRAN
| I can second that. |
442717
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Biden-Harris have spent $22.76 billion to resist IRAN
| And you’re another one, Redhart… ;) |
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[442733]
442733
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Biden-Harris have spent $22.76 billion to resist IRAN
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As you may remember, wasn't always so careful, I was schooled by you two! Any lapse is solely my fault. |
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442710
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Biden-Harris have spent $22.76 billion to resist Iran in URBAN war
URL: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/21st-century-will-be-battle-urban-front
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This article is more than 7 years old The 21st century will be a battle on the urban front Originally published in The Australian. By Euan Graham, Greg Colton 15 August 2017 If war is hell, as General William Tecumseh Sherman said, then urban warfare is its ninth circle. Scenes of abject devastation emanating from Mosul in Iraq, and to a lesser extent Marawi in The Philippines, drive home that waging war in built-up areas causes huge damage to civilian infrastructure. Not only does this amplify the humanitarian costs of civilian casualties and large-scale population displacement, it potentially undermines the legitimacy of governments trying to reassert control in civil conflicts. This is not lost on the insurgents, past or present. The paradox of destroying a town to save it, coined at the height of the Vietnam war, remains a confronting reality a half-century on. The challenges of urban warfare are not new, but the recent seizure of cities by Islamist insurgents in Iraq, and a more diffuse group of fighters in The Philippines, points to a change of tactics, away from traditional terrorist acts and guerilla orthodoxy. However, it would be unwise to inflate the comparison. Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is a far more potent threat than the Abu Sayyaf group in the southern Philippines or the Maute group, Abu Sayyaf’s local ally in Marawi and the would-be Islamic State franchise there. Islamic State had two years to prepare for the defence of Mosul, a city of 1.5 million people. This explains why it took nine months for Iraqi forces to retake the city, house by house, despite wide-ranging support from international coalition forces. Marawi is much smaller and has been a different sort of battle, developing from a botched police raid to capture Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon, into an impromptu military siege. The local terrorist alliance around Hapilon and the Maute group remains relatively small and local. Only about 50 foreign jihadis are thought to have infiltrated into Marawi, though their influence was felt disproportionately in the latter stages of the battle through the appearance of improvised explosive devices. Significantly, the two established insurgent groups in Mindanao, the Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front oppose Hapilon and the Maute group. Their longstanding objective is increased autonomy from Manila, not the creation of an Islamic State-inspired caliphate. After nearly three months, the fighting in Marawi is finally winding down. Between 40 and 60 fighters are estimated to be holding out, their ammunition apparently running low. The fact that it has taken the Armed Forces of the Philippines, with non-combat assistance from the US and Australia, this long to retake the town bears out their relative inexperience and lack of specialised equipment for urban warfare. The insurgents fighting in Mosul and Marawi are different, but the military response in both siege battles offers a closer point of comparison, with its heavy reliance on firepower, particularly airstrikes. The US was recently reported to be mulling lethal drone strikes in the southern Philippines as part of its assistance to the Philippines army, although it appears unlikely The Philippines would accept such an offer, given domestic sensitivities towards any US combat role in its former colony. While minimising military casualties, the resulting damage risks turning tactical victory into strategic defeat if it further alienates populations and the government cannot repair infrastructure and quickly restore services. Guerilla warfare has long been characterised by insurgents operating from the sanctuary of impenetrable jungles or mountain lairs. Groups of fighters survived by seeking to remain beneath the “detection threshold”, a military term used to determine the identified existence of a threat. Now, Western military forces can target insurgents in remote areas with relative ease and little fear of collateral damage. The US strike on Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan earlier this year using a 10,000kg “mother of all bombs” is an example. With the growing array of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets, such as armed remotely piloted aircraft and satellite imagery, it is increasingly hard for insurgents to stay beneath the detection threshold through remoteness alone. By seizing urban areas and forcing civilian populations to stay, as Islamic State did in Mosul, they forgo being undetectable but stay under the discrimination threshold, because of the difficulty in discriminating fighters from the surrounding population. Occupying urban areas not only keeps insurgents beneath the discrimination threshold, it also forces the governments they oppose to make hard choices: besiege the urban area, inflicting prolonged hardship on civilians, or storm the city and potentially take heavy casualties. The urban environment is perfect terrain for the defender. Many Western military advantages are negated. Operations require large numbers of personnel, while armoured vehicles cannot manoeuvre freely. Area weapons such as artillery are less effective. Roads become impassable fire lanes. Doorways are such obvious entry points they are known in the infantry as funnels of death. Sewers allow the enemy to reappear in areas previously cleared. Snipers, machineguns, IEDs, suicide bombers — all can attack from myriad directions. In Mosul, suicide bombers using prepositioned up-armoured cars packed with explosives emerged from underground carparks or garages as the Iraqi forces moved through the city. The time from the threat appearing to detonation was usually measured in seconds. Urban fighting has long been characterised by high numbers of casualties for the attacking force. US forces fighting to retake Hue during the Tet offensive in Vietnam suffered an average daily casualty rate (killed and wounded) of 20 per 1000 servicemen, almost three times that suffered during the assault on Okinawa in 1945. During the most intense phase of the battle for Hue, fighting for the Citadel, this leapt to 52 per 1000. The US casualty rate on D-Day at Omaha Beach was about seven per 1000. The US Department of Defence estimates 40 per cent of the elite Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service have become casualties in the battle for Mosul. According to Al Jazeera, more than 8000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen had been killed by May, a toll that undoubtedly will have risen in the two months of fierce fighting that followed before Mosul was declared liberated. This is a high cost considering Islamic State’s pre-battle strength was estimated by the Iraqi military at 5000 to 6000 fighters. Marawi was captured by about 500 militants. Two months of combat has resulted in at least 119 government troops killed, although the real number could be higher. Facing such casualty figures, the US-led coalition in Iraq and the Philippines army increasingly have relied on the combination of surveillance assets and airstrikes to target insurgents. While undoubtedly saving military lives, the collateral cost of such a strategy is staggering. The UN assesses that of western Mosul’s 54 residential districts, 15 are so badly damaged that most houses are uninhabitable and half of the buildings in another 23 districts were destroyed. It probably will take years to rebuild the city and the bill for basic infrastructure alone is likely to top $1 billion. While the firepower used in Marawi pales in comparison with Mosul, artillery and airstrikes have extensively damaged central districts. In both cities, if the damage is not restored quickly or alternative accommodation made available, festering resentment against the respective governments is certain to follow. Upwards of 200,000 remain displaced by the fighting in Marawi. The fear is the battle will act as a beacon to attract regional radicals and Islamic State veterans fleeing the battlefields in Iraq and Syria. Does the increasing lethality available to insurgents and the tactical advantage offered by the urban environment mean that more towns and cities will be targeted by them? Probably. Will the response need to rely on overwhelming firepower to dislodge them? Not necessarily. In 2013, a disaffected faction from the MNLF captured Zamboanga city in the southern Philippines. The military reaction was rapid. Within three weeks the Philippines army handed the city back to the police, having reportedly killed 183 rebels and captured 292, for the loss of 23 soldiers and policemen. The prompt use of infantry, with combat engineers and light armour in support, denied the rebels time to construct defences. Herein lies the key to an effective tactical response against the growing threat of urban warfare. Governments need to have a rapidly deployable combined arms force, trained in urban warfare that can respond quickly at the first appearance of militants in towns or cities. Time is critical; the longer insurgents have to prepare defences, the harder it will be to dislodge them. Providing this training around the world will enhance significantly the resilience of countries at risk from terrorism. |
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442704
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Biden-Harris have spent $22.76 billion to support Israel's...
| that's certainly one way to frame it... |
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None
442703
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Trump would have nuked Gaza
|
and Vance would have done ad the highest bidder er bid. Choose. |
Responses:
[442718] [442763] [442767] [442770] [442773] [442706] [442762] [442769] [442779] [442780] [442713] [442730] [442707]
442718
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: empty rhetoric ? War porn response?
|
We were talking politics. You respond with war porn. All arguments have been made. I won't respond with war porn from the other side, there's plenty. Or reminders the child is as much a hostage of Hamas as Israeli children stolen on Oct. 7. Etc and etc. |
442763
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: mitra calls images of Israel murdering innocents civilians 'porn'
| what does that tell you? |
442767
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: mitra calls images of Israel murdering innocents civilians 'porn'
|
Oh. My. God, akira. Are you fucking KIDDING me??? All it tells ANYONE with an adult, functional sensibility, is that mitra clearly recognizes that you are trying to utilize SHOCK VALUE to inspire deeper horror about what's going on in Gaza, because you disrespectfully and condescendingly hallucinate that she, and others here, don't ALREADY care more than you could possibly have any idea, thanks very much...and because YOU CAN'T GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK HEAD THAT IT'S POSSIBLE TO HATE WHAT'S GOING ON, BUT ALSO RECOGNIZE COMPLEXITIES ARE INVOLVED THAT CANNOT BE EASILY CHANGED.............. And YES, I'm YELLING... On this *one simple fact* all your violent verbal character assassination pivots upon: THERE ARE COMPLEXITIES OVER WHICH WE HAVE NO CONTROL..... Accept and acknowledge it, or at least stop berating people here because THEY DO...jayzeus criminy, woman... Sorry, mitra, if this is a misstep on my part. |
442770
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: mitra calls images of Israel murdering innocents civilians 'porn'
|
Thank you, Shadow. Perhaps it will be heard. God knows I've said it every way I can. |
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[442773]
442773
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: mitra calls images of Israel murdering innocents civilians 'porn'
|
Most welcome, mitra...but I doubt it'll make the slightest difference... You and others have reiterated this, I've done so more times than I can count, at this point; like Old Timer, she just blocks out and ignores anything anyone says that doesn't align with her trajectory... What's saddest and most offensive about it is how she's claiming higher moral ground than anyone who *modifies their horror* by acknowledging the complexities of the situation... ...and when that comes back on her (as it must), I don't think she's going to have the faintest idea where it came from... |
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442706
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Israel Hit Gaza Strip With the Equivalent of Two Nuclear Bombs
|
and that was a year ago: Nov 2, 2023 Israel Hit Gaza Strip With the Equivalent of Two Nuclear Bombs By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor / euromedmonitor.org "Geneva - Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip since the start of its large-scale war on 7 October, equivalent to two nuclear bombs, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in a press release issued today. According to the Geneva-based human rights organisation, the Israeli army has admitted to bombing over 12,000 targets in the Gaza Strip, with a record tally of bombs exceeding 10 kilograms of explosives per individual. Euro-Med Monitor highlighted that the weight of the nuclear bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan at the end of World War II in August 1945 was estimated at about 15,000 tons of explosives. Due to technological developments affecting the potency of bombs, the explosives dropped on Gaza may be twice as powerful as a nuclear bomb. This means that the destructive power of the explosives dropped on Gaza exceeds that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Euro-Med Monitor said, noting that the area of the Japanese city is 900 square kilometres, while the area of Gaza does not exceed 360 square kilometres. The rights group’s statement underlined that Israel uses bombs with huge destructive power, some of which range from 150 to 1,000 kilograms, and cited a recent statement by Israeli War Minister Yoav Gallant that declared that more than 10,000 bombs have been dropped on Gaza City alone. Israel’s use of internationally banned weapons in its attacks on the Gaza Strip has been documented, said Euro-Med Monitor, especially the use of cluster and phosphorus bombs, which are waxy toxic substances that react quickly to oxygen and cause severe second- and third-degree burns. The Euro-Med Monitor team has also documented cases of injuries among Gazans due to Israeli air strikes that are similar to those caused by the aforementioned cluster bombs. These small, high-explosive bombs cause penetrating shrapnel wounds and explosions inside the body, leaving victims with severe burns that lead to skin melting off and sometimes to death. Fragments from these bombs cause unusual swelling and poisoning of the body, plus internal injuries from transparent fragments that do not appear on x- rays. Israel’s use of highly explosive bombs in densely populated areas poses the single greatest threat to civilians in modern armed conflicts, said Euro-Med Monitor, and explains the complete leveling of residential neighbourhoods in Gaza and the overall severity of the widespread devastation there. The rights organisation further stressed that Israel’s destructive and arbitrary attacks are in violation of international humanitarian law, which stipulates that the protection of civilians is obligatory in all cases and under any circumstances, and that killing civilians is considered a war crime in both international and non-international armed conflicts and may amount to a crime against humanity. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the 1949 Geneva Convention both regulates fundamental human rights in times of war to prevent lethal health effects from weapons that are prohibited by international law—some of which because they have the potential to cause “genocide”. “The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited,” according to Article 25 of the Hague Regulations relating to the laws and customs of land warfare prohibits. Meanwhile, Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that “Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.” Violations of Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention are considered to be grave breaches of the Law of Armed Conflict, and therefore to be war crimes. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor called for the formation of an independent international committee to investigate the volume of explosives and internationally prohibited weapons being used by Israel against civilians in the Gaza Strip. The rights organisation also called on the international community to hold all those responsible for these inhumane attacks accountable, and to take any necessary measures to guarantee justice for the Palestinian victims. " |
Responses:
[442762] [442769] [442779] [442780] [442713] [442730] [442707]
442762
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: yes, of course, delete my posts... your mo is also transparent, bopp(NT)
| (NT) |
442769
From: mr bopp, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: yes, of course, delete my posts... your mo is also transparent,...
| many of your posts belong on international...hence deleted...others are just chronic trolling...also deleted... |
442779
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: yes, of course, delete my posts... your mo is also transparent,...
|
pointing out mitra's manipulative, dishonest posts are trolling? oh well. sorry not sorry. |
Responses:
[442780]
442780
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: yes, of course, delete my posts... your mo is also transparent,...
|
"pointing out mitra's manipulative, dishonest posts are trolling?" Oh come along, akira... You're doing nothing of the kind and, yes, duh, it's trolling. All's you're doing is hammering everyone from your relentlessly singleminded trajectory, dissing them when they have the gall to be coming from their own...and now, disingenuously acting all innocent as if you don't know full well what you're doing... You once called *me* a joke...lol... |
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442713
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Israel Hit Gaza Strip With the Equivalent of Two Nuclear Bombs
|
"the Equivalent of Two Nuclear Bombs" And still Trump told Netanyahu to end the war quickly. Wonder what he meant? And Hamas won't surrender. Wonder why? |
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[442730]
442730
From: shadow, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: US supplies weapons, but mitra can't criticized US policy of...
|
Actually no, it's not, akira... What IS fascinating is your OCD need to harangue people here...fascinating and repulsive...you know, like watching someone out of control do things they know they'll cringe at years down the road...when they've grown up a little more and have more respect for the realities of others... |
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442707
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: UN report: raises serious concerns under the laws of war
|
UN report: Israeli use of heavy bombs in Gaza raises serious concerns under the laws of war 19 June 2024 Palestinians search for casualties at the site of Israeli strikes on houses in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, October 31, 2023. REUTERS/Anas al-Shareef TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY RELATED PRESS RELEASES Haiti: Tackling insecurity “utmost priority” UN report says, as hundreds killed by ongoing gang violence PRESS RELEASES Sudan: Türk sounds alarm over hostilities in El Fasher, warns of serious human rights violations PRESS RELEASES Comment by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on explosions across Lebanon and in Syria GENEVA (19 June 2024) – The UN Human Rights Office published an assessment today on six emblematic attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza last year that led to high numbers of civilian fatalities and widespread destruction of civilian objects, raising serious concerns under the laws of war with respect to the principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack. The report details six emblematic attacks involving the suspected use of GBU- 31 (2,000 lbs), GBU-32 (1,000 lbs) and GBU-39 (250 lbs) bombs from 9 October to 2 December 2023 on residential buildings, a school, refugee camps and a market. The UN Human Rights Office verified 218 deaths from these six attacks, and said information received indicated the number of fatalities could be much higher. “The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign," said High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. The report concludes that the series of Israeli strikes, exemplified by the six incidents, indicates that the IDF may have repeatedly violated fundamental principles of the laws of war. In this connection, it notes that unlawful targeting when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, in line with a State or organisational policy, may also implicate the commission of crimes against humanity. “Israel's choices of methods and means of conducting hostilities in Gaza since 7 October, including through the extensive use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in densely populated areas, have failed to ensure that they effectively distinguish between civilians and fighters. “Civilian lives and infrastructure are protected under IHL. This law lays out the very clear obligations of parties to armed conflicts that make protection of civilians a priority.” On 11 November 2023, the IDF stated that since the start of their operation into Gaza, the Air Force had “struck over 5,000 targets to eliminate threats in real time”. By that time the Ministry of Health in Gaza had documented the killing of 11,078 Palestinians, with another 2,700 missing and about 27,490 reportedly injured. At around the time of these attacks an IDF spokesperson was reported to have said that “while balancing accuracy with the scope of damage, right now we’re focused on what causes maximum damage.” Another IDF official was quoted as saying “Hamas and the residents of Gaza” are “human beasts” and “are dealt with accordingly. Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza. No electricity and no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell.” While the focus of the report is on Israel, it also highlights that Palestinian armed groups have continued to fire indiscriminate projectiles toward Israel, inconsistent with their obligations under international humanitarian law. The report also stresses the obligation to protect civilians and civilian objects by avoiding locating military objectives in or near densely populated areas. In one of the six emblematic Israeli attacks on Gaza, the report states that strikes on Ash Shujaiyeh neighbourhood, Gaza City, on 2 December 2023 caused destruction across an approximate diagonal span of 130 metres, destroying 15 buildings and damaging at least 14 others. The extent of the damage and the craters visible through verified visual evidence and satellite imagery indicates that approximately nine GBU-31s were used, it added. The UN Human Rights Office received information that at least 60 people were killed. GBU-31, 32 and 39s are mostly used to penetrate through several floors of concrete and can completely collapse tall structures. Given how densely populated the areas targeted were, the use of an explosive weapon with such wide area effects is highly likely to amount to a prohibited indiscriminate attack, the report finds. The effects of such weapons in these areas cannot be limited as required by international law, resulting in military objects, civilians and civilian objects being struck without distinction, it adds. The report also states that in five of the attacks, no warning was issued, raising concerns with respect to violations of the principle of precaution in attack to protect civilians. In three of the strikes, the IDF asserted it had targeted individuals connected to the attacks on Israel on 7 and 8 October 2023. As the report sets out, however, the mere presence of one commander, or even several fighters, or of several distinct military objectives in one area, does not turn an entire neighbourhood into a military objective, as this would violate the principle of proportionality and the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks. “While the IDF asserts it has initiated factual assessments of most of the incidents examined in the report, it is now eight months since the first of these extremely serious incidents occurred. Yet still there is no clarity as to what happened or steps toward accountability,” said the High Commissioner. “I call on Israel to make public detailed findings on these incidents. It should also ensure thorough and independent investigations into these and all other similar incidents with a view to identifying those responsible for violations, holding them to account and to ensuring all victims' rights to truth, justice and reparations.” |
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