Israel announces largest West Bank land seizure since 1993 during Blinken visit By Cate Brown March 22, 2024 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/22/israel-largest-west-bank-settlement-blinken-visit/ Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich speaks at the Knesset in Jerusalem in July 2023. (Maya Alleruzzo/AP) Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, announced the seizure of 10 square kilometers (3.8 square miles) of Palestinian territory in the West Bank on Friday. The move marks the single largest land seizure by the Israeli government since the 1993 Oslo accords, according to Peace Now, a settlement watchdog group. “While there are those in Israel and the world who seek to undermine our right over the Judea and Samaria area and the country in general,” Smotrich said Friday, referring to the territory by its biblical name, “we are promoting settlement through hard work and in a strategic manner all over the country.” Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law. Still, Israel has used land orders like the one issued Friday to gain control over 16 percent of Palestinian-controlled lands in the West Bank. The newly seized area includes parcels in the Jordan Valley and between the settlements of Maale Adumim and Keidar. The announcement came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Tel Aviv for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the future of thewar in Gaza. Blinken’s arrival followed meetings in Cairo with several Arab leaders, and amidcallsfrom Democratic senators forPresident Bidento establish a “bold, public framework” for a two-state solution that recognizes a “nonmilitarized Palestinian state.” Friday’s land order is particularly problematic for the prospect of a two-state solution, experts say. “If Israel confiscates land around Jerusalem, all the way to the Dead Sea, there will be no future for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem,” said Hamza Zubiedat, a land rights activist for the Ramallah-based Ma’an Development Center. “This is where a Palestinian capital was supposed to be located, according to the American and European talks.” The land transfer will also cut across the West Bank, dividing the north and south. “If the Israelis annex this area near Maale Adumim, it will be a catastrophe for Palestinians who live in the south,” Zubiedat said. “Palestinian traders, especially in the south, will be cut off, and it will become impossible to have any independent Palestinian ways of life.” Israeli and Palestinian settlements in the West Bankestinian Palestinians have little ability to stop the land transfers. After the 1967 war, Israel issued a military order that stopped the process of land registration across the West Bank. Now families lack the paperwork to prove that they have private ownership over their land. And tax records, the only other evidence of West Bank property rights, are not accepted by Israeli authorities. In June, the Knesset waived a long-standing legal precedent that required the prime minister and the defense minister to sign off on West Bank settlement construction at every phase. Smotrich enjoys near-total control over construction planning and approvals in the West Bank, and approved a record number of settlements in 2023. “Israel has reached the conclusion that they could get away with this huge land grab because of the lack of international action,” said Sarit Michaeli, international advocacy lead at B’Tselem. “There have been individual economic U.S. sanctions placed on violent settlers, but the greater violence of the occupation is this colossal land theft.” Smotrich, a member of Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, is a key leader in Israel’s settlement movement. Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst, called the Friday land transfer announcement by Smotrich a “provocation,” but also the continuation of his pro-settler ideological project. “He entered the government with one overriding purpose: to annex all land conquered in 1967 and extend permanent Jewish sovereignty everywhere, no matter how and when it has to happen,” Scheindlin said. “The timing and provocation ahead of Blinken’s visit is a bonus.” The Biden administration announcedsanctions on two West Bank settler outpostsearlier this month, the first use of such economic restrictions on Israeli outposts. While West Bank settlements are authorized by the Israeli government, outposts are considered illegal under Israeli law. Sam Granados and Andrew Van Dam contributed to this report.
Over 70% of Palestinians support Hamas's slaughter of Jews on October 7th. Keep this in mind before criticizing Israel. Over 70% of Palestinians say Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israelis was right decision https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/mar/22/over-70-palestinians-say-oct-7-hamas-attack-israel/
Meanwhile, in Israel, which has a free press and free-ish access to inforation: Jewish Israelis believe the IDF is using an appropriate amount (51%) or not enough force (43%) [as they intentionally starve Gaza] Keep this in mind before criticizing Palestine. for context, since GWB loves to remind us of the authoritarian assholes that Hamas are: 85% say they did not see videos, shown by international news outlets, showing acts committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians, such as the killing of women and children in their homes; only 14% (7% in the West Bank and 25% in the Gaza Strip) saw these videos. When asked if Hamas did commit these atrocities, the overwhelming majority said no, it did not and only 7% (1% in the West Bank and 16% in the Gaza Strip) said it did.
As mentioned many times previously, Netanyahu and his right-wing government is not interested in pursuing a peace agreement including a two-state solution. Only if a more moderate government is voted into office in Israel then this second step in a longer term solution will be pursued after Hamas is eliminated as a governing and militant entity in Gaza. The expansion of settlements in the West Bank including the recent seizure of land is detrimental in the process (which is why Netanyahu is doing this). In any type of peace agreement this land likely would need to be given back. Effectively creating another barrier to a two-state solution. Israel appropriates 1,976 acres of land in Jordan Valley, declaring it state land https://www.timesofisrael.com/israe...and-in-jordan-valley-declaring-it-state-land/
Moscow concert hall attack: Why is ISIL targeting Russia? Deadly attack in Moscow claimed by ISIL affiliate leaves more than 133 people dead and approximately 100 injured. The burned facade of the Crocus City Hall concert venue following Friday's deadly attack, on the outskirts of Moscow, Russia, on March 23, 2024 [Sergei Vedyashkin/Moscow News Agency/handout via Reuters] By Kevin Doyle 23 Mar 2024 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/23/moscow-concert-hall-attack-why-is-isil-targeting More than 133 people have been killed and more than 100 others were injured following a brazen attack on concertgoers at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall before a performance by a Soviet-era rock band on Friday. Assailants dressed in camouflage uniforms opened fire and reportedly threw explosive devices inside the concert venue, which was left in flames with its roof collapsing after the deadly attack. Eleven people had been detained, including four people directly involved in the armed assault, Russia’s Interfax news agency reported early on Saturday. ISIL’s Afghan branch – also known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K) – has claimed responsibility for the attack and United States officials have confirmed the authenticity of that claim, according to the Reuters news agency. Here is what we know about the group and their possible motive for the Moscow attack. ISIL’s Afghanistan branch The group (also known as ISIS-K) remains one of the most active affiliates of ISIL and takes its title from an ancient caliphate in the region that once encompassed areas of Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Turkmenistan. The group emerged from eastern Afghanistan in late 2014 and was made up of breakaway fighters of the Pakistan Taliban and local fighters who pledged allegiance to the late ISIL leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The group has since established a fearsome reputation for acts of brutality. Murat Aslan, a military analyst and former Turkish army colonel, said ISIL’s Afghanistan affiliate is known for its “radical and tough methodologies”. “I think their ideology inspires them in terms of selecting targets. First of all, Russia is in Syria and fighting against Daesh [ISIL] like the United States. That means they see such countries as hostile,” Aslan told Al Jazeera. ISIL fighters who surrendered to the Afghan government are presented to the media in Jalalabad, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, in November 2019 [Parwiz/Reuters] “They are now in Moscow. Previously they were in Iran, and we will see much more attacks, maybe in other capitals,” he added. Though its membership in Afghanistan is said to have declined since a peak in about 2018, its fighters still pose one of the greatest threats to the Taliban’s authority in Afghanistan. Previous attacks by the group ISIS-K fighters claimed responsibility for the 2021 attacks outside Kabul airport that left at least 175 civilians dead, killed 13 US soldiers, and many dozens injured. The ISIL affiliate was previously blamed for carrying out a bloody attack on a maternity ward in Kabul in May 2020 that killed 24 people, including women and infants. In November that same year, the group carried out an attack on Kabul University, killing at least 22 teachers and students. In September 2022, the group took responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing at the Russian embassy in Kabul. Last year, Iran blamed the group for two separate attacks on a major shrine in southern Shiraz – the Shah Cheragh – which killed at least 14 people and injured more than 40. The US claimed that it intercepted communications confirming that the group was preparing to carry out attacks before coordinated suicide bombings in Iran in January this year killed nearly 100 people in the southeastern Iranian city of Kerman. ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the Kerman attacks. Why is ISIL attacking Russia? Defence and security analysts say the group has targeted its propaganda at Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent years over the alleged oppression of Muslims by Russia. Amira Jadoon, assistant professor at Clemson University in South Carolina and co-author of The Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Strategic Alliances and Rivalries, said Russia is seen as a key opponent of ISIL, and Moscow has become a focus of ISIS-K’s “extensive propaganda war”. “Russia’s engagement in the global fight against ISIS and its affiliates, especially through its military operations in Syria and its efforts to establish connections with the Afghan Taliban – ISIS-K’s rival – marks Russia as a key adversary for ISIS/ISIS-K,” Jadoon told Al Jazeera. Syrian and Russian soldiers are seen at a checkpoint near Wafideen camp in Damascus, Syria, in March 2018 [Omar Sanadiki/Reuters] Should the Moscow attack be “definitely attributed” to ISIS-K, Jadoon said, the group hopes to win support and advance “its goal to evolve into a terrorist organisation with global influence” by demonstrating that it can launch attacks within Russian territory. “ISK has consistently demonstrated its ambition to evolve into a formidable regional entity…. By directing its aggression towards nations such as Iran and Russia, ISK not only confronts regional heavyweights but also underscores its political relevance and operational reach on the global stage,” Jadoon said. Kabir Taneja, a fellow at the Strategic Studies programme of the Observer Research Foundation – a think tank based in New Delhi, India – told Al Jazeera that Russia is seen by ISIL and its affiliates as “a crusading power against Muslims”. “Russia has been a target for ISIS and not just ISKP (ISIS-K) from the beginning,” Taneja, author of the book The ISIS Peril, said. “ISKP attacked [the] Russian embassy in Kabul in 2022, and over the months Russian security agencies have upped their efforts to clamp down on pro-ISIS ecosystems both in Russia and around its borders, specifically Central Asia and the Caucusus,” he said. In early March, Russia’s Federal Security Service, better known as the FSB, said it had thwarted an ISIL plan to attack a Moscow synagogue. ISIL and Russia have also long been enemies in other battlefields, such as Syria, where Moscow’s airpower and support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime were critical in pushing back gains made by ISIL fighters in the early years of the civil war. Russian forces have also been accused by rights groups and other opposition fronts in Syria of carrying out abuses and excesses against civilians through their bombing campaigns. A picture taken on October 3, 2015, shows Russian Sukhoi Su-30SM jet fighters landing on a runway at the Hmeimim airbase in the Syrian province of Latakia [Komsomolskaya Pravda/Alexander Kots/AFP] Moscow’s close relations with Israel are also anathema to ISIL’s ideology, Taneja said. “So this friction is not new ideologically, but is so tactically,” he told Al Jazeera. There’s another factor too: Largely away from the world’s attention, the armed group has regrouped into a formidable force after setbacks in Syria and Iran. “ISKP in Afghanistan has grown in strength significantly … and it’s not just ISKP, ISIS in its original regions of operations, Syria and Iraq, also sees [an] uptick in operational capabilities,” Taneja said. Today, he added, it is “ideologically powerful even if not politically, tactically or strategically … that powerful any more”. That poses a challenge for a distracted world, he said. “How to combat this is the big question at a time when big power competition and global geopolitical churn has put counterterrorism on the back burner,” Taneja added. Firefighters walk near the Crocus City Hall concert venue following Friday’s deadly attack, outside Moscow, Russia [Sergei Vedyashkin/Moscow News Agency/handout via Reuters]. ISIS-K social media channels are “jubilant” following the attack on Moscow, said Abdul Basit, a senior associate fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. “They are celebrating the attack,” Basit told Al Jazeera, adding that supporters are “translating and recirculating the responsibility claim” issued by the ISIL-linked Amaq News Agency. Basit said that ISIL’s method of operations involve amplifying a propaganda campaign ahead of a large-scale attacks and this had been observed in recent anti-Russian messaging. Such attacks “add to the credibility” of armed groups, Basit explained, which then “increases the scope of their funding, recruitment and propaganda”. More attacks are possible in Russia and elsewhere, he added, given the key role that ISIL recruits of Central Asian origin – particularly Tajiks – played when the group held territory in Syria. They have now returned to the Central Asia region and their intent to carry out attacks has now materialised in capability, Basit said. Previous attacks in Russia Moscow and other Russian cities have been the targets of previous attacks. In 2002, Chechen fighters took more than 900 people hostage in a Moscow theatre, the Dubrovka, demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya and an end to Russia’s war on the region. Russian special forces attacked the theatre to end the standoff and 130 people were killed, most suffocated by a gas used by security forces to leave the Chechen fighters unconscious. The deadliest attack in Russia was the 2004 Beslan school siege which was carried out by members of a Chechen armed group seeking Chechnya’s independence from Russia. The siege killed 334 people, including 186 children. SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
shaking your fist at them w/o advocating punitive sanctions is just virtue signaling cover and how they've kept expanding territory in violation of UN agreements and international law.
So we have attempting to start a WW3. Muslims, Christians, Catholics, Zionists in the name of Allah, Jesus, Mary, Jehovah.
Statistically the number of deaths put forward by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry are obviously fake. Biden use of Hamas death count challenged by prominent statistician, says numbers 'aren't accurate' President Biden used the Hamas run ministry of health numbers during his State of the Union address this month https://www.foxnews.com/world/biden...nent-statistician-says-numbers-arent-accurate During President Biden's State of the Union speech, he used the Gaza death count produced by the Hamas-run ministry of health, quoting some 30,000 deaths. Those numbers have been scrutinized by a renowned University of Pennsylvania statistician who has cast serious doubt on the figures. Abraham Wyner revealed in an interview with Fox News Digital that the U.S.-designated terrorist movement, Hamas, issued fake casualty numbers in its war against Israel. Wyner is a tenured professor of statistics and data science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and faculty co-director of the Wharton Sports Analytics and Business Initiative. His dramatic findings have ostensibly debunked many of the Hamas causality claims accepted at face value by President Biden’s administration, the U.N. and many major mainstream media organizations. Possibly furthering Wyner's calculation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently announced that 13,000 terrorists had been killed in Gaza since the IDF went in. Wyner disputes the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry's number that of the more than 30,000 Palestinians who have died since October 7, the majority are children and women. Hamas invaded southern Israel on October 7 and slaughtered 1,200 people, including over 30 Americans. He said he "was able to show that these numbers aren't right" and, based on the number that Israel’s government is reporting, that the casualty rate "instead of, being 70% women and children, it's probably closer to 30% to 35% women and children" in the Gaza Strip. Wyner revealed in an interview with Fox News Digital that the U.S.-designated terrorist movement, Hamas, issued fake casualty numbers in its war against Israel. The core of Wyner’s analysis revolves around statistical variability and correlation. He said "Hamas had claimed, and is continuing to claim, that approximately 70% of the casualties have been women and children. They are not reporting, or had at the time, and by mid-November, had not reported that Israel had killed any of its own fighters." Wyner continued, "But they weren't differentiating between fighters and civilians . . . they were reporting that there were just not very many men dying. Subsequently, by February, they reported that about 25% of the casualties were their own fighters, which left a strange situation . . . there just aren't enough civilian men dying." He added, "They're just they're missing. And what we call the missing male problem, which suggests that the numbers as being represented aren't accurate." According to Wyner, "And so what that means is the number of people dying every day is almost the same. It isn't changing very much, and that just didn't make any sense to me. In war, there should be variability. Variability coming from war plans, from lulls, from intense increases in activity. And none of that was observable in the data. There was what we call too little dispersion." White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, during a recent press briefing, was asked why Biden had quoted the Hamas numbers in an interview. , Jean-Pierre said, "What we — we have said — we’ve been really clear: There are publicly available data that showed, sadly, how many — how many deaths that we have seen in Gaza. And the President has been very clear. There’s too much. It’s tragic. It’s tragic what we’re seeing. And the President’s going to keep — continue to speak to that." When approached by Fox News Digital about Wyner’s report, which was first published in March by the online magazine Tablet, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said "Far too many civilians have been killed in this conflict. Every civilian death in conflict is a tragedy. Deaths are not mere statistics; they’re lost futures, dreams and potential." The State Department did not refute Wyner’s findings. In late October, President Biden said he has "no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using" for the death toll in Gaza. However, both Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin have since January adopted the Hamas numbers as truth, only to have to walk back their statistics as coming from the jihadi terrorist entity Hamas. Wyner does not dispute the State Department contention about the tragedy of civilian deaths, noting, "The ratio of casualties, civilian casualties to military casualties is in the realm of 1 to 1. And historically, that's actually an excellent sign of intense care being placed to just target enemies and keep the civilian population as safe as possible, recognizing that war is horrible and war does produce collateral damage, as in every loss of life is tragic, but war is tragic, and war causes death." But he stresses that "The stakes are extremely high. Hamas's only path to victory, whatever it may be, is through international pressure, namely through the United States. And the only way they can get there is to convince the United States that the civilian casualties are not coming with a commensurate military gain. And that would potentially cause Israel to be forced into a cease-fire, whether that's permanent or temporary. That is, leaves Hamas in place." Wyner said about the lack of correlation in Hamas’ data, "The basic idea is that on days where there isn't very much bombing, you should see just a few children and women dying. And there's more. You should see more women and children dying on days where there's lots of civilian casualties as opposed to fighters. You should see a few women and children, and on days where there's lots of civilians dying, you should see lots of women and children. But that relationship wasn't there. It was what we call uncorrelated." A spokeswoman from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs(OCHA) told Fox News Digital, "The United Nations relies on the Health Ministry in Gaza as a source for casualties figures in that area, as it is nearly impossible at the moment to provide any UN verification on a day-to-day basis. Any of their data used in our products is clearly sourced." The U.N. does not classify Hamas as a terrorist organization. Critics have lamented that many legacy news organizations and politicians have failed to differentiate between civilians and Hamas terrorists who were killed during the war—as well as highlight that a terrorist organization, with a reported history of fabricating death tolls, supplies the numbers. Wyner said that the left-of-center Israeli daily Haaretz reported in 2011—two years after the 2009 Israeli operation in Gaza against Hamas terrorists—that "Hamas admitted that the numbers that it had been telling the public about the size of their losses, of their fighter losses, which they had reported to be 49, was actually over 700, which was exactly what Israel had said it was in the very beginning." He added, "So Israel has a good record of keeping track of the number of Hamas fighters that it kills, and Hamas doesn't have a good record. Yet, the media was largely ignoring Israel's claims or, when reporting them at all, noticing that they are unverifiable. Yet, the data right in front of you, coming from Hamas, showed pretty clear evidence that there is significant problems with the numbers. They don't match reality."