GWB's been on board with every dogshit decision in the middle east favored by the Israeli right wing hard liners. Look how he cheered for Bibi before 3 yrs ago, how he cheered the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear deal, how he cheered the moving of the embassy to Jerusalem, how he cheered the Al-Aqsa mosque raid, and how he cheered the Abraham accords. Every single one of those instances tied to the Jan7 result. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised he cheered the settlers before he did a 180 recently.
Germany invokes the Holocaust in defence of Israel Gerald Imray Updated Jan 14, 2024 https://www.afr.com/world/middle-ea...olocaust-in-defence-of-israel-20240114-p5ex2g Cape Town | South Africa’s case at the United Nations’ top court accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in the war in Gaza has prompted an emphatic defence from Germany which stood out among the predictable responses from Israel’s foes and supporters. South Africa says more than 50 countries have expressed support for its case. Others, including the United States, have strongly rejected South Africa’s allegation that Israel is violating the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Pro-Palestinians in New York City join “Hands Off Yemen” rally outside of the United Nations. Getty Germany has come out swinging, announcing it would intervene as a third party in the case – a process that would allow the country to offer the court its own perspective on the genocide law. Germany said there is “no basis whatsoever” to the case, a move in keeping with its long-standing support for Israel. Since the defeat of the Nazi regime, Germany has rooted much of its post-Holocaust identity in the idea of supporting the Jewish state. The world’s reaction to the landmark case that was heard on Thursday and Friday at the International Court of Justice in The Hague shows a predictable global split when it comes to the inextricable 75-year-old problem of Israel and the Palestinians. The diplomatic posturing came as tens of thousands of people took to the streets in capitals across the world to protest against Israel’s war on Gaza as the conflict entered its 100th day. People gathered at rallies in the United States, South Africa, Britain, Indonesia and Malaysia on Saturday, as well as at protests in Thailand, Japan, Italy, Greece and Pakistan. The majority of countries backing South Africa’s case are from the Arab world and Africa. In Europe, only the Muslim nation of Turkey has publicly offered its support. No Western country has declared support for South Africa’s allegations against Israel. China and Russia have said little about one of the most momentous cases to come before an international court. ‘Completely unfounded’ allegations Germany’s announcement of support for Israel late on Friday (Saturday AEDT), the day the hearings closed, has symbolic significance given its history of the Holocaust, during which the Nazis killed 6 million Jews in Europe. Israel was created after World War II as a haven for Jews in the shadow of those atrocities. “Israel has been defending itself,” German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said. His statement also invoked the Holocaust, which in large part spurred the creation of the UN Genocide Convention in 1948. “In view of Germany’s history ... the federal government sees itself as particularly committed to the Convention against Genocide,” he said. He called the allegations against Israel “completely unfounded”. Pro-Israel demonstrators march towards the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. Bloomberg The EU has only said that countries have a right to bring cases to the UN court. Most of its member states have refrained from taking a position. Turkey, which is in the process of joining the EU, was a lone voice in the region. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country provided documents that were being used against Israel in the case. “With these documents, Israel will be condemned,” he said. Arab condemnation The Organisation of Islamic Co-operation was one of the first blocs to publicly back the case when South Africa filed it late last month. It said there was “mass genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli defence forces” and accused Israel of “indiscriminate targeting” of Gaza’s civilian population. The OIC is a bloc of 57 countries that includes Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt. Its headquarters are in Saudi Arabia. The Cairo-based Arab League, whose 22 member countries are almost all part of the OIC, also backed South Africa’s case. South Africa drew some support from outside the Arab world. Namibia and Pakistan agreed with the case at a UN General Assembly session this week. Malaysia also expressed support. “No peace-loving human being can ignore the carnage waged against Palestinians in Gaza,” Namibian President Hage Geingob was quoted as saying in the southern African nation’s The Namibian newspaper. Malaysia’s foreign ministry demanded “legal accountability for Israel’s atrocities in Gaza”. China, Russia (which is also facing allegations of genocide in the world court) and India have largely remained silent, seemingly aware that taking a stand in such an inflammatory case has little upside and could irreversibly upset their relationships in the region. India’s foreign policy has historically supported the Palestinian cause, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi was one of the first global leaders to express solidarity with Israel and call the Hamas attack terrorism. A handful of South American countries have spoken up, including the continent’s biggest economy, Brazil, whose foreign ministry said President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva backed South Africa’s case. However, the ministry’s comments did not directly accuse Israel of genocide but focused on the need for a ceasefire in Gaza. Interim ruling South Africa’s case against Israel is two-fold: It wants the court to say Israel is committing genocide and to issue an interim ruling ordering an end to its military campaign in Gaza. The court said it would decide on an interim ruling soon but, reflecting the gravity of the case, it could take years for a final verdict on the genocide charge. Brazil said it hoped the case would get Israel to “immediately cease all acts and measures that could constitute genocide”. Other countries have stopped short of agreeing with South Africa. Ireland’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar, said the genocide case was “far from clear-cut” but that he hoped the court would order a ceasefire in Gaza. It’s uncertain if Israel would obey any order to stop its military action. Russia did not when the same court told it to halt its invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.
I am searching for a word to described the current Israeli government. Some along the lines of "disarray". Israel’s Hardline Finance Minister Refuses to Pay Hamas Hostage Salaries: Report Right-winger Bezalel Smotrich reportedly rejected a recommendation that Israel pay each hostage a salary equal to what they earned before being abducted https://themessenger.com/news/israel-hostage-salaries-bezalel-smotrich-gaza-hamas Israel’s hardline finance minister is refusing to pay salaries to Israeli hostages in Gaza, in a bizarre showdown with other government officials, according to an Israeli press report. The finance ministry, run by Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, has rejected a recommendation by the country’s Justice Ministry that the state pay every hostage a salary equal to what he or she earned before being abducted. Army reservists receive the same treatment, the Haaretz newspaper reported. The payments not only help the hostages’ families but they mean the hostages keep up their social security and health care payments so that they can hold on to their pensions and health insurance. Smotrich’s Finance Ministry is arguing that hostages' salaries should be paid only after they are released, as their families are already getting a monthly stipend to help cover expenses, as well as a grant to help cover the costs of advocating to free their relatives. Israeli lawmakers only learned of the problem on Monday, when they asked why the payments hadn’t been made, more than 100 days after the hostages were kidnapped by Hamas-led terrorists and taken to Gaza. Some 110 or so hostages are still believed to be in Gaza, along with the bodies of another couple dozen who have died in captivity.
that's because they want the west bank too (as if it wasn't already obvious) and retaliating on the backlash of not paying Palestinians gives them the perfect excuse. For latest: see Gaza
It is important to get more aid in Gaza for the civilians. Let's hope this deal holds together and that Hamas does not steal all the food and medicine. Israel Gaza war: Deal reached on aid to Gaza https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68000227 Israel and Hamas have reached a deal to allow more humanitarian aid into war-ravaged Gaza, Qatari mediators say. They say that under a deal brokered by Qatar and France, medicines will be given to hostages held by Hamas. In return Israel will allow more basic supplies into Gaza. Conditions in the territory are dire after more than three months of Israeli bombardment. Meanwhile the US says it is hopeful that further talks could lead to the release of more hostages. The US Middle East envoy has been in Qatar to discuss the possibility of such a deal, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Tuesday. The discussions were "very serious and intensive", he added . "We are hopeful it will bear fruit and bear fruit soon." Earlier, Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari announced the agreement on aid. Under the deal, the humanitarian supplies will leave the Qatari capital, Doha, for Egypt on Wednesday. The aid will then be taken to Gaza, to be delivered to civilians, while medicines are to reach Israeli captives. More than 132 hostages are thought to be still held in Gaza. About 240 people were captured by Hamas in a series of raids in southern Israel on 7 October. Some 1,300 people, mainly civilians, were killed. In a letter sent to Israel's war cabinet after a ceasefire ended last year, the Hostages Families HQ group said many abductees needed regular medical attention and some were in immediate danger. Last week Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said David Barnea, head of Israel's national intelligence agency Mossad, had approached Qatar to secure a deal for providing the medicines needed. On Tuesday Mr Netanyahu issued a statement expressing "his appreciation to all those who have assisted in the endeavour". The Hamas attacks in October triggered Israel's intense bombardment of Gaza, which has killed more than 24,000 people so far, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Palestinian officials say that 85% of Gaza's population has been displaced. While more aid is now getting into Gaza the UN's humanitarian chief has described the situation as "intolerable". Israel is coming under increasing international pressure to consider a ceasefire or pause in Gaza, such is the scale of the civilian suffering. Even its closest ally the US, which consistently defends Israel's right to self defence, has repeatedly told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the civilian death toll is "far too high". Last week US State Secretary Anthony Blinken cited UN figures that 90% of the population continued to face severe food insecurity, adding: "For children, the effects of long periods without sufficient food can have lifelong consequences." "More food, more water, more medicine, other essential goods need to get into Gaza."
It is important to get more aid in Gaza for the civilians. Let's hope this deal holds together and that Palestinians are grateful and remember to thank Israel for a packet of biscuits and cup of water and mercy bestowed upon them and does not steal all the food and medicine.
Released hostages say that every Palestinian civilian they encountered were directly complicit in the hostage taking. Gazan 'Civilians' Involved in Every Stage of Hamas Hostage Scheme, Freed Israelis Say https://freebeacon.com/national-sec...amas-hostage-scheme-released-israelis-reveal/ Israeli women and children have in recent weeks begun speaking publicly about what they experienced during nearly two months in Hamas captivity late last year. In primetime Hebrew TV interviews, the released hostages have confirmed that ordinary Gazans were deeply complicit in every stage of the hostage scheme. Unarmed teens helped to abduct Jews from their homes on Oct. 7, while Gazan women and children held some of the Israelis captive. In other cases, Gazan doctors collaborated with Hamas terrorists to covertly treat kidnapped Israelis and imprison them in hospitals. When the Israelis encountered Gazans on the streets, the results were often terrifying. The revelations underscore the urgency of Israel's 100-plus-day war to destroy Hamas and bring home the 132 hostages who, officials believe, remain captive in Gaza. At the same time, though, the released hostages' accounts indicate how difficult it could be to extricate either the remaining hostages or Hamas from a radicalized population. "The main issue is that the organization is very much melted into the social structure of Gaza," Michael Milshtein, a former senior Israeli military intelligence officer and a leading expert on Hamas, told the Washington Free Beacon. "There is no way you can really know who is Hamas. Someone might have a grocery store where he sells tomatoes and water, but he might also have storehouse of weapons and give religious lessons there." And his wife and kids might be keeping an Israeli hostage at home. "Hamas is not only a political matter in Gaza. It's a way of life," Milshtein said. "We can and should ruin Hamas militarily and change the political arena in Gaza. But ultimately the Gazan people will have to do some soul searching. And here in the Arab world, not only the Palestinians, soul searching is very rare." Abduction On Israel's Channel 12 news earlier this month, Nili Margalit, 41, recounted how Gazan "civilians, regular people" took her hostage at knifepoint on Oct. 7. Margalit said a "boy … 17, maybe 18 years old" and an "older man with the knife" broke down the door of her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz and forced her into a stolen golf cart, still barefoot and wearing pajamas. As they exited the kibbutz, Margalit said, she saw a "mob, thousands of people," including "women and children," pouring across Israel's breached border with Gaza, less than two miles away. She said a pair of boys, one "no more than 4 or 5 years old" and the other 15 or 16, were riding an ATV that belonged to her father, a local cattle breeder who was among about 1,200 people in Israel murdered by terrorists that day. After Margalit's abductors crossed into Gaza, they transferred her to a blood-stained car along with another Nir Oz resident, Tamar Metzger, 78, who was "very injured," Margalit said. The Gazans then drove to a warehouse, where they "sold" the Israelis to Hamas terrorists, according to Margalit. For the next 49 days, Hamas held Margalit and Metzger in its network of underground tunnels along with dozens of other captives. Both women were among 105 hostages, 80 of them Israeli women and children, freed during a weeklong truce deal between Israel and Hamas at the end of November. While Margalit was the first released hostage to publicly confirm that Gazan civilians abducted Israelis on Oct. 7, eyewitnesses, footage, and other evidence have indicated the phenomenon was relatively widespread. As the Free Beacon reported, a mob of mostly unarmed Gazans, including children and women, followed Hamas into Nir Oz and other Israeli communities on that day and participated in the professional terrorists' atrocities. Roni Krivoi, a 25-year-old Israeli taken hostage from the Supernova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, was recaptured by ordinary Gazans after he escaped captivity for several days, his aunt told Israel's Kan public radio station following his release in November. Gazan "civilians" were also responsible for the abduction of Margalit Moses, 78, from Nir Oz on Oct. 7, Irit Lahav, an unofficial spokeswoman for the kibbutz, told the Free Beacon this week. Moses and Krivoi declined through representatives to be interviewed. Detention A number of the Israeli women and children freed by Hamas said in interviews with Channel 12 last month that they spent part of their captivity in family homes, hospitals, and other civilian sites in Gaza. Mia Schem, who was shot in the arm and abducted by Hamas terrorists from the Supernova rave on Oct. 7, said her captors brought her directly to a hospital in Gaza as she was bleeding to death. The surgeon who operated on her arm "looked at me and said, 'You’re not going home alive,'" she recalled. After the procedure, Schem received no further treatment of even pain medication, she said. She was taken to a family home, where a man and his family held her captive with "pure hate," Schem said, forbidding her to speak, cry, or move. She would go days without receiving food and was never allowed to bathe. "[The man's] wife hated the fact that he and I were in the same room. She hated it. So she'd taunt me," Schem said, recounting how the woman would insult her appearance and bring the man food "but nothing for me." "The children would open the door look at me, talk about me, laugh at me," Schem said. "One time, the son enters the room with a bag of candy. He opens the bag and gives his father candy, then comes over to me, opens the bag, closes it, and leaves. You know, pure evil." "I experienced hell. Everyone there are terrorists," Schem said in a separate interview on Israel's Channel 13. "There are no innocent civilians, not one." Schem said she spent the final days of her 54-day captivity in Hamas's underground tunnels. Doron Katz Asher, 34, said terrorists took her and her daughters, 5 and 2, from her mother's house in Nir Oz to a family home in Gaza on Oct. 7. Her mother was killed on the way. For 16 days, a Gazan woman and her daughters traded shifts watching Katz Asher and her daughters "24/7," she said. After that, the family was sent, at night and disguised in traditional Muslim clothing, to a nearby hospital, where they were sealed in a room with a half-dozen other captives for more than a month, Katz Asher said. There were no mattresses, food was inconsistent, and using a toilet required permission from the captors. "Constant fear" was how Katz Asher described the 49 days of captivity: "fear that maybe because my daughters are crying and are making some noise, [the terrorists will] get some directive from above to take them, to do something to them." Chen Goldstein-Almog, 48, said Hamas terrorists moved her and her three youngest children, 17, 11, and 9, between different homes, the tunnels, a school, and a grocery store in Gaza. She also told the New York Times that they were held in a mosque. The family walked from location to location at night, wearing hijabs to hide their identity. Goldstein-Almog's 17-year-old daughter, Agam, said that during their stay at the school, "a sweet lady welcomed us and offered us water and arranged a place for us to sleep." "I turned to my mother and said, 'There are good people in the world,'" Agam recalled. "And five minutes later, they shot a barrage of rockets from the school [into Israel] and everyone was shouting, 'Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar,' and I told her, 'Forget what I said, they're all the same.'" In the tunnels, Agam and her mother said they met young women who had been abused by their captors, echoing multiple other accounts. "Some still had bloody gunshot wounds that had been left untreated in makeshift bandages. One had a dismembered limb," Agam elaborated in an essay for the Free Press published on Tuesday. "I heard from them accounts of terrifying and grotesque sexual abuse, often at gunpoint." One day, the family heard on the radio that the father and eldest daughter had been killed on Oct. 7 in their homes in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz 15 miles north of Nir Oz, also near the Gaza border. "We will never forgive and we will never show any kind of empathy towards these people," Agam said. "If we previously believed that there was a chance for peace, we've lost all faith in these people, especially after we were there and among the population." Ofelia Roitman, 77, of Nir Oz said that she was held captive by a Gazan couple, a technician and a nurse, who locked her in a room of their apartment alone for 46 days. The couple kept her window closed so that she could not tell day from night and fed her small portions of pita bread and rice. "The situation with the food was like the Holocaust," even as the couple appeared to eat well, she said. Roitman said she heard and felt rockets being launched directly underneath the apartment building. People in the street would erupt in celebration. "I heard the cheers, a party outside near the market," she said. "When the rockets hit Tel Aviv or Beersheba, they applauded. … They were so joyful." Roitman was taken to several Gazan doctors to treat a gunshot wound she sustained during her abduction, and she spent her final week in Gaza in a hospital with other hostages, she said. The first doctor Roitman saw, in an underground tunnel, at first refused to treat her, saying, "I'm not treating a Jew." As Israel has waged war on Hamas, it has uncovered numerous examples of Hamas apparently hiding terrorist operations behind civilian infrastructure, including homes, hospitals, and schools. Israel has also found evidence that Gazan medical personnel work for Hamas and that the terrorist group is holding hostages in hospitals. Hamas has denied the allegations. Coming and going According to many of the released Israeli hostages who have told their stories, their captors repeatedly warned them that their lives would be at risk if they were discovered by ordinary Gazans. The crowds that gathered as the Israelis entered and left Gaza seemed to confirm those warnings. Sharon Aloni Cunio, 34, recalled how she and her twin 3-year-old daughters were mobbed on Oct. 7 as terrorists brought them into Gaza on a tractor from their home in Nir Oz. "We cross the border, and I say to myself, God help us, we're in Gaza. People start beating everyone who was sitting on the tractor—just beating us, from all sides. It was horrific," she said. "You don't know if [the terrorists] intend to take you hostage or to lynch you in front of the mob." Maya Regev, 21, who was shot at the Supernova rave and abducted along with her brother, said their captors "paraded us in Gaza … screaming, 'Allahu Akbar!'" "I'm with my head down," Regev said. "Someone pulls me backward by the hair, holding me like that so people could see my face." Yaffa Adar, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor whose abduction from Nir Oz on Oct. 7 appears to have involved ordinary Gazans, said that when she arrived in Gaza, there were "people all around, lots of them, spitting, yelling—not pleasant." The Free Beacon could not reach Adar for comment. Katz Asher described a similar scene as Hamas handed her and her daughters over to the Red Cross on Nov. 24. "As soon as the Red Cross jeeps arrived, the Arab street was on us," she said. "Hundreds of people gathered in seconds, banging on the cars. It was the first time [five-year-old daughter] Raz told me, after I protected her for a month and a half, it was the first time Raz told me, 'Mom, I'm scared.'"