Israel’s defiance on full display; Biden admin commences hand-wringing – Day 356

contact@ifamericansknew.org September 28, 2024blinken, google, Hezbollah, humanitarian aid to gaza, nasrallah, Netanyahu, un general assembly walks out, West Bank

The Israeli military conducts an airstrike on the Dahieh area located south of Beirut, Lebanon, resulting in plumes of smoke rising from the site on September 28, 2024. [Houssam Shbaro – Anadolu Agency] — The Israeli military conducts an airstrike on the Dahiyeh area located south of Beirut, Lebanon, resulting in plumes of smoke rising from the site on September 28, 2024. [Houssam Shbaro – Anadolu Agency] (photo)

Mass Walkout as ‘Global Pariah’ Netanyahu Addresses UN General Assembly

Common Dreams reports:

A large number of diplomats and other officials walked out of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Friday as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to defend his nation’s slaughter of more than 41,000 people in the Gaza Strip during the past year and over 700 in Lebanon this week.

Journalists and critics of the “global pariah” shared photos and videos of people filing out of the hall before Netanyahu’s address—which came just a day after 25 anti-genocide protesters were arrested for blocking his motorcade in Manhattan.

While there was some audience applause from the sparsely populated room on Friday, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Rami Ayari explained that “the people you hear cheering the PM during the speech are in the gallery who he brought for that purpose.”

Netanyahu began his Friday address by taking aim at the world leaders who throughout the week have condemned the recent escalation against Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the past year of Israeli forces bombing and starving Palestinians in Gaza.

“I didn’t intend to come here this year. My country is at war fighting for its life,” Netanyahu said. “But, after I heard the lies and slanders leveled at my country by many of the speakers standing at this podium, I decided to come here and set the record straight.”

Armed with more of his infamous maps of the Middle East, the right-wing leader went on to claim that “Israel seeks peace,” while also pledging to wage war on Hamas-governed Gaza until “total victory” and telling “the tyrants of Tehran” that “if you strike us, we will strike you.”

Noting that Netanyahu also spoke of “savage enemies who seek to destroy our common civilization,” James Zogby, co-founder and president of the Arab American Institute, said: “Words spoken by the man who has been charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. This is a disgrace. Abusing the General Assembly platform to lie and incite.”

JEWISH NEWS SYNDICATE (JNS) ADDS: Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. envoy to the global body, and Robert Wood, the political special affairs ambassador who tends to take her place at the Security Council, did not appear to be in the room.

An excerpt from Netanyahu’s defiant speech to the UN – to a largely empty chamber, except for the guest area, which was filled with Israel supporters:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also declared,

I say to you, until Israel – until the Jewish state – is treated like other nations, until this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce.

Popularity of Netanyahu’s Likud party grows as Israel pounds Lebanon: Survey

Al Jazeera reports:

A poll conducted by Israeli daily Maariv shows that Israel’s deadly attacks on Lebanon have significantly boosted the popularity of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

If elections were held today, Likud would lead with 25 seats in the Knesset, compared with 19 for its main rival, the opposition National Unity party led by Benny Gantz, the survey showed.

This is the first time since the war on Gaza began last year that Likud has gained such an advantage, the newspaper said.

Blinken faces calls to resign after lying to Congress to cover for Israel’s genocide

Middle East Monitor reports:

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is facing mounting pressure to resign after a report earlier this week uncovered that he misled Congress about Israel’s obstruction of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The 62-year-old, who is a staunch Zionist, is said to have misled the American people to maintain US weapons flow to Israel despite fears that the apartheid state is committing genocide in Gaza.

The report details how Blinken contradicted findings from his own department’s experts and USAID in a May report to Congress, stating that Israel was not “prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance” to Gaza.

It’s believed that Blinken misled the government because US law prohibits the supply of arms to countries blocking American humanitarian aid.

Israel is a small country lacking the means to manufacture weapons at a rate required to execute regular wars and preserve its so-called deterrence capacity.

Israel’s ability to carry out a year-long assault on Gaza would be severely hampered without the constant supply of weapons from the US and its western allies.

(Read the full article here.)

US to ‘adjust’ its military force posture in Middle East

Al Jazeera reports:

President Joe Biden directed the Pentagon to “assess and adjust as necessary US force posture” in the Middle East, the White House says, following repeated Israeli air strikes in southern Beirut collapsed at least six residential towers in the heavily populated Dahiyeh area.

“He has directed the Pentagon to assess and adjust as necessary US force posture in the region to enhance deterrence, ensure force protection, and support the full range of US objectives,” the White House said in a statement.

Secretary of State Blinken said Friday, “I want to be clear that anyone using this moment to target American personnel, American interests in the region – the United States will take every measure to defend our people.”

MILITARY TIMES ADDS: The U.S. has kept an increased military presence in the Middle East throughout much of the past year, with about 40,000 forces, at least a dozen warships and four Air Force fighter jet squadrons spread across the region both to protect allies and to serve as a deterrent against attacks, several U.S. officials said.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group, equipped with F-35C fighters to the Middle East last month. (photo)

West Bank: Israeli forces destroy food warehouse during raid

WAFA reports:

A convoy of Israeli military vehicles stormed the occupied West Bank city of Qalqilya in the early hours of Friday morning.

Israeli forces toured the city’s Kafr Saba neighborhood, where they raided a workshop and a food warehouse, destroying the contents of the latter.

Destruction following a raid by Israeli forces in Tulkarem Camp, occupied West Bank, oPT. [East Jerusalem YMCA/ Save the Children] (photo)

Israel accused of breaking global labor law by withholding Palestinian worker pay

The Guardian reports:

Ten trade unions have accused Israel of breaching international labor law by holding back pay and benefits from more than 200,000 Palestinian workers since 7 October.

The Israeli government stands accused of “blatant” violations of the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) protection of wages convention, tipping many Palestinians into extreme poverty.

Workers from Gaza and the West Bank, employed in Israel, did not receive payment for work completed prior to last October 7th, and have received no wages since, according to the complaint.

A complaint filed on Friday aims to recover the wages of Palestinian workers who previously worked in Israel.

Israel revoked work permits for about 13,000 Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip to work legally in Israel following the Hamas attack on 7 October, according to the complaint, leaving those workers with unpaid wages from September and October. Those wages would have normally been paid on 9 October.

An additional nearly 200,000 Palestinian workers from the West Bank employed in Israel have not been permitted to enter Israel, and have received no termination notices, according to the brief, which argues they are owed wages stipulated by their employment contracts for their previous work and subsequent months.

The unions allege that Israel is violating the ILO’s protection of wages convention, which has been ratified by a hundred member states, including Israel in 1959…

(Read the full article here.)

US’ Blinken urges diplomacy as Israel intensifies attacks in Lebanon

Anadolu Agency reports:

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday called for path to diplomacy as Israel intensified its strikes in Lebanon, warning both Israel and Hezbollah to “stop firing”.

“The most important thing to do through diplomacy is to try first to stop firing in both directions, and then to use the time that we would have in such a ceasefire to see if we can reach a broader diplomatic agreement,” Blinken told reporters at a news conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.

“The path to diplomacy may seem difficult to see at this moment, but it is there, and in our judgment, is necessary, and we will continue to work intensely with all parties to urge them to choose that course,” he said.

NOTE: Blinken’s both-sides-ism sidesteps the facts: Israel has been responsible for about 82 percent of the cross-border attacks.

Google Was Set to Host an Israeli Military Conference. When We Asked About It, the Event Disappeared.

The Intercept reports:

The Israel Defense Tech Conference, aimed at tech companies working with the Israeli military, was scheduled for November at the Google for Startups campus in Tel Aviv.

The event, according to a listing posted on the event management app Luma, was pitched at “founders, investors and innovators” looking to network and learn more about the defense tech space.

It was co-sponsored by Google; Fusion Venture Capital; Genesis, a startup accelerator; and the Israeli military’s research and development arm, known as the Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D, or Ma’fat).

Google was not only listed as the physical host of the event and one of its sponsors, but the event listing also included a notice that attendees “approve of sharing [their] details with the organizers (Fusion & Google)” as part of signing up.

When The Intercept contacted Google and the other companies and venture capital firms on the event page, the event page disappeared. Google spokesperson Andréa Willis told The Intercept in an email, “Google is not associated with this event.”

Willis did not respond when asked how this could be possible if Google is hosting and co-sponsoring the event, or why the event page went down. None of the other companies or venture capital firms on the event page responded to requests for comment.

After months of sustained protests against Google’s relationship with Israel, the company appears to be trying to muddy that relationship, at least in the public eye, while continuing its collaboration with the Israeli military…

(Read the full investigation here.)

israeli espionage against the US hits 366 billion — Israeli espionage against the US is hurting the US economy – and has been for years. (photo)

MORE NEWS:

IMEMC Daily Reports.

Anadolu Agency: OPINION – Israel needs to face trial for organ trafficking: Claims and confessions

Middle East Eye: The BBC is weaponizing its Lebanon reporting to help disguise Israel’s crimes

STATISTICS OCTOBER 7 – SEPTEMBER 27:

Palestinian death toll from October 7, 2023 – September 27, 2024: at least 42,304* (41,586 in Gaza* – 11,308 women (30%), 16,715 children as of September 5. [The Ministry’s figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.]

This is expected to be a significant undercount since thousands of those killed have yet to be identified – and at least 718 in the West Bank (~148 children). This does not include an estimated 10,000 more still buried under rubble (4,900 women and children). Euro-Med Monitor reports 49,032 Palestinian deaths.

Lancet: “Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death9 to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.

Ralph Nader earlier estimated 300,000 Palestinians may have been killed in Gaza.

At least 45 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons (27 from Gaza, 23 from West Bank).
At least 41 Palestinians have died due to malnutrition (at least 37 of them children)**.
About 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million population are currently displaced.
Almost 500,000 Gazans are currently experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

Palestinian injuries from October 7 – September 27: at least 101,910 (including at least 96,210 in Gaza and 5,700 in the West Bank, including 830 children). [It remains unknown how many Americans are among the casualties in Gaza.]

Reported Israeli death toll from October 7, 2023 – September 27, 2024: ~1,457 (~1,139 on October 7, 2023, of which ~32 were Americans, and ~36 were children); 293*** military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza; 25 military and civilians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel) and~10,000 injured.

The death toll from Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon since Oct. 8 has reached 1,540 including women and children, with some 5,410 injured, a Lebanese official said Wednesday. The number of displaced individuals registered in approved shelters is 77,100. The actual number of displaced people has likely surpassed 250,000.

NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries of Israelis on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.

*Previously, IAK did not include 471 Gazans killed in the Al Ahli hospital blast since the source of the projectile was being disputed. However, given that much evidence points to Israel as the culprit, Israel had previously bombed the hospital and has attacked many others, Israel is prohibiting outside experts from investigating the scene, and since the UN and other agencies are including the deaths from the attack in their cumulative totals, if Americans knew is now also doing so.

**Euro-Med Monitor reports that Gaza’s elderly are dying at an alarmingly high rate. The majority die at home and are buried either close to their residences or in makeshift graves dispersed across the Strip. There are currently more than 140 such cemeteries. Additionally, according to Euromed, thousands have died from starvation, malnourishment, and inadequate medical care; these are considered indirect victims as they were not registered in hospitals.

***More than 40 of the deaths listed above were Israeli soldiers killed by Hezbollah in fighting at the Israel-Lebanon border. The figure does not include the reportedly 53 Israeli soldiers – nearly 16% of the total Israeli military deaths – killed due to friendly fire in Gaza and other military-related accidents.

† For most of the conflict, women and children accounted for about 70% of deaths in Gaza, with children making up a little over 40% of those killed, according to official statistics.

Find previous daily casualty figures and daily news updates here.

Hover over each bar for exact numbers.
Source: IsraelPalestineTimeline.org

Saturday, 28 September 2024