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"What is really amazing, and frustrating, is mankind's habit of refusing to see the obvious and inevitable until it is there, and then muttering about unforeseen catastrophes."

-- Isaac Asimov

News and Opinion

On this day in particular, I would like to express my deepest sympathies for the victims of Israeli murderousness over the past year.

On this day in particular, I would like to express my deepest sympathies for the victims of Israeli murderousness over the past year.

On this day in particular, I would like to mourn the thousands upon thousands of children who have been killed by western-supplied bullets and bombs in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon over the last twelve months.

On this day in particular I would like to express my sincerest condolences to the Palestinian parents who have had to bury their children, or pieces of their children, or bags of shapeless carnage they’ve been told were their children — if those parents are still alive themselves.

On this day in particular I would like to lift up my heart to the people who are being ethnically cleansed from northern Gaza right at this very moment, and the people in southern Lebanon who are being subjected to daily Israeli massacres.

I wish I could bring myself to express sympathy for other groups on this particular day, like the Israelis who were killed in the Hamas attack one year ago. But I think there’s been enough of that. I really do.

Sympathy for Israel has been used over this past year to manufacture consent for the slaughter of mountains of human beings in advancement of land grabs and military agendas that were planned long before the seventh of October 2023. The sympathy which Israel received after the Hamas attack was immediately weaponized in advancement of those agendas, and has been weaponized every single day since.

When someone is using a weapon to hurt people, a good person will take their weapon away, and won’t give them any more weapons. This is true of actual, physical weapons like the ones the western empire has been pouring into the Israeli war machine, and it is true of the weaponized sympathy that Israel apologists have been using to justify its genocidal atrocities.

Expressing sympathy for Israel on this particular day would be like expressing sympathy for a mother with Munchausen syndrome by proxy who is poisoning her children in order to garner sympathy and attention from her community. That sympathy — which would normally be a very healthy response to the deaths and trauma of others — is in this case the actual problem.

And even if this were not the case, Israel has received more than enough sympathy already. It is an extensively documented fact that the western press have been vastly more sympathetic toward the Israeli victims of the Hamas attack than they have been to Israel’s victims in Gaza, despite the victims of Israeli atrocities being orders of magnitude greater in number. This discrepancy in sympathy is so extensive that it can only be called journalistic malpractice, which is only made possible by the fact that Arabs are not recognized as fully human under the rules of the western empire.

So on this day in particular I will be expressing sympathy for the populations upon whom Israel has inflicted many, many times more death and trauma than it received one year ago — and for those populations only.

The Hamas attack was a response from a desperate colonized people against a tyrannical occupying oppressor, and many of the Israelis who were killed on that day are known to have been killed by the Israeli military and its barbaric “Hannibal directive” of murdering its own people to prevent their being taken hostage. Not another word of sympathy needs to be expressed toward Israel for this, here or anywhere else.

So on this day in particular I do not express sympathy toward Israel — in fact, I condemn it.

I condemn Israel’s bombing of hospitals. I condemn Israel’s assassination of journalists. I condemn Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilian buildings known to be packed full of children. I condemn Israel’s deliberate killing of humanitarian aid workers. I condemn Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war and extermination. I condemn Israel’s systematic rape and torture of Palestinian prisoners. I condemn Israel’s practice of murdering children and other noncombatants with snipers. I condemn Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinian territories.

I condemn Israel for bombing an orphanage in Gaza City last week. I condemn Israel for killing five year-old Hind Rajab and her family, and killing medical workers who tried to come to her rescue. I condemn Israel for knowingly targeting a World Kitchen convoy and killing seven aid workers. I condemn Israel for assassinating Refaat Alareer. I condemn Israel for bulldozing a dead man into the dirt like a piece of garbage, unknown and unaccounted for, like God knows how many others. I condemn Israel for the birth of the acronym WCNSF (Wounded Child, No Surviving Family) in Gaza’s medical facilities. I condemn Israel for making me learn what the insides of a dead child look like, and reminding me every motherfucking day for the last year. I condemn Israel for all the tortured, thirsty, lonely, drawn-out deaths of all the countless people buried alive under the rubble of Gaza.

On this day in particular I stand in solidarity with the victims of Israeli atrocities, which are being facilitated by the globe-spanning western empire under which I live. I extend my deepest sympathy to those victims, and my sincerest apologies for failing to do more to stop this nightmare.

Matt Hoh : Does the White House Want a Middle East War?

Israel launches intense wave of airstrikes on 120 sites in Lebanon

Israel launched an intense wave of air raids on southern Lebanon on Monday, with 100 aircraft targeting about 120 sites in the space of an hour, according to the country’s military. An IDF Arabic spokesperson issued an urgent warning to Lebanese civilians to avoid being on the beach or on boats on the coast from the Awali River southward until further notice.

The wave of strikes came as Israelis marked the anniversary of last year’s 7 October attacks by Hamas, the trigger for a year of escalating war in the region. ...

Amid clear evidence that Israel is rapidly ramping up its military operations against multiple Iran-allied proxies, Hamas fired rockets out of Gaza to coincide with memorial events, vowing to continue with a “long and painful war of attrition” against Israel.

Hamas’s ability to fire rockets, although massively constrained by 12 months of a devastating Israeli offensive that has claimed more than 41,000 Palestinian lives, comes despite periodic statements from the IDF declaring the group effectively beaten. Despite the quickly increasing tempo of Israeli military operations, Hezbollah also fired scores of missiles at Israel throughout the day on Monday, while a ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Houthis was shot down as evening fell.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs : Lack of a 2-State Solution Threatens Israel

'We'll Come for You Next': Israel Threatened to Kill Teen Journalist in Gaza—Then Did

Journalists around the world expressed outrage Monday over the Israeli military's killing of a teenage Palestinian reporter who continued showing the world the destruction of Gaza despite threats to his life—and at the Western media's silence on the story.

Hassan Hamad, 19, whose work appeared on Al Jazeera and other outlets, was killed Sunday in an Israeli drone strike on his home in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, The Palestine Chronicle reported. The bombing followed multiple text messages warning Hamad to stop recording images of Israel's assault on Gaza, which has killed or injured nearly 150,000 Palestinians and for which the close U.S. ally is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.

Palestinian journalist Maha Hussaini posted a photo of one threatening WhatsApp message sent to Hamad. It read, "Listen, if you continue spreading lies about Israel, we'll come for you next and turn your family into... This is your last warning."

Hussaini said that Hamad also received "several calls from an Israeli officer ordering him to stop filming in Gaza."

"He didn't comply," she wrote. "He was killed today."

Hassan Hamad was a 19-year-old Palestinian journalist who tried to document one of the worst crimes of our age in impossible circumstances.

The Israeli state threatened to murder him unless he fell silent.

He refused to fall silent. They murdered him. https://t.co/k3Baz7sB6E

— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) October 6, 2024

A colleague of Hamad's wrote on the slain journalist's X account:

With great sadness and pain, I mourn the journalist Hassan Hamad... Hamad, the journalist who is not yet 20 years old, resisted for a whole year in his own special way. He resisted when he was away from his family so that they would not be targeted. He resisted when he was suffering to find an internet signal and would sit for an hour or two on the roof of the house to send videos that reach you in seconds. Yesterday, since 10:00, he was moving between the bombed areas and returning to search for an internet signal, then returning to cover the places of the remains, suffering from an injury he sustained in his leg. Nevertheless, he completed filming. At 6:00 am, he called me to send me the last video. After a call that did not exceed a few seconds, he was saying, "Hey, hey, it's done," and he hung up. This is a feeling that no human being can bear. Hassan also resisted the occupation and left a mark and left a message that we will complete after him.

Journalists and others posted graphic video footage of pieces of Hamad's remains being collected and placed in a shoebox.

"I will never forget the silence of the media industry about this," Al Jazeera executive producer Laila Al-Arian wrote in a social media post containing the video.

Thomson Reuters Foundation deputy editor-in-chief Barry Malone responded to Hassan's killing by asking, "If you're a journalist and you're not speaking out in solidarity... why?"

Anthropology professor Jason Hickel said that "we can never unsee the images of journalist Hassan Hamad's remains, after he was assassinated by Israeli forces."

"Western journalists and editors should hang their heads in shame for their outrageous silence in the face of these crimes," he added.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says that "at least 128 journalists and media workers, all but five of them Palestinian, have been killed—more journalists than have died in the course of any year since CPJ began documenting journalist killings in 1992."

"All of the killings, except two Israeli journalists killed in the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, were carried out by Israeli forces," the group added. "CPJ has found that at least five journalists were specifically targeted by Israel for their work."

Gaza's Government Media Office (GMO) said Sunday that 175 media workers have been killed in the embattled enclave over the past year.

The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has filed multiple complaints at the International Criminal Court—whose chief prosecutor is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders—alleging "war crimes against journalists in Gaza."

US APPROVED Israel Bombing Aid Trucks

Biden Allowing Israel to March US Into War With Iran

The Biden administration is not only endorsing but also on the verge of actively assisting a new Israeli armed attack on Iran. National security adviser Jake Sullivan says that the United States is working directly with Israel regarding such an attack. “The United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” declares President Joe Biden.

The projected attack serves no U.S. interests. The attack perpetuates a broader pattern of escalating violence in the Middle East that also serves no U.S. interests. The Iranian missile salvo to which the coming Israeli attack is ostensible retaliation was itself retaliation for previous Israeli attacks. Retaliation for retaliation is a prescription for an unending cycle of violence.

The United States is facilitating an attack on a nation that does not want war and has been remarkably restrained in trying to avoid it, in the face of repeated Israeli provocations. A sustained Israeli bombing campaign against Iranian-related targets within Syria elicited a response only when it escalated to an attack on a diplomatic compound in Damascus, killing senior Iranian officials. Even then, the Iranian response, in the form of an earlier salvo of missiles and drones in April, was designed and telegraphed in a way to make a show of defiance but — with most of the projectiles certain to be shot down — to cause minimal damage and almost no casualties.

When Israel assassinated visiting Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in a government guest house in Tehran in July — the sort of attack that would elicit a quick and forceful response by the U.S. or Israel if it happened in one of their capitals — Iran did nothing until last week. It finally acted only after yet another Israeli attack — this time an assault on residential buildings in a suburb of Beirut that killed a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer along with Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah. Far from being motivated by any grandiose ambitions of regional dominance or desire to destabilize the region, Iranian leaders believed that they were getting killed by a thousand cuts from Israel and that they had to respond to the repeated Israeli attacks lest they lose the confidence not only of their own people but of regional allies. The missile firings that constituted Iran’s retaliation, like the ones in April, again caused minimal damage or casualties.

By cooperating with Israel in a new attack, the United States is assisting a state that has been responsible for most of the escalation and the vast majority of death and destruction in the Middle East for at least the past year. Although Hamas’ attack on southern Israel last October is commonly seen as the starting point of the subsequent mayhem in the Middle East, the question of who is responding to whom could go back farther than that. For example, the 1,200 deaths from that Hamas attack, horrible to be sure, were fewer than the number of Palestinians that Israel had killed in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip just from the day-to-day operations of the occupying Israeli army, supplemented by settler violence in the West Bank, during the previous eight years. ...

The U.S. presidential election provides another motivation for the Israeli government to escalate regional warfare. Netanyahu certainly would like to see a second term for Donald Trump, who gave Israel just about anything it wanted during his previous time in office, with nothing in return except political support for Trump. This relationship is part of a broader political alliance between the Republican Party and Netanyahu’s Likud Party. To the extent an escalatory mess in the Middle East causes problems for the Biden administration and thereby hurts the election chances of Vice President Kamala Harris, that is a bonus from Netanyahu’s point of view.

Netanyahu is more likely to enjoy that bonus and the other fruits of ramping up conflict with Iran to the extent that the United States gets directly involved in that conflict. Such involvement not only makes the politically costly mess for the Biden administration all the messier, but also enables Netanyahu to claim credibly that he has the United States fully at his side in his government’s lethal activities.

None of these Israeli objectives are in the interest of the United States. Several of the objectives, such as hamstringing any U.S. diplomacy that involves Iran, are directly and manifestly opposed to U.S. interests.

Israel’s regional warfare — and more specifically a U.S.-backed attack on Iran — would harm U.S. interests in several additional ways.

Closer association with Israel’s lethal operations increases the chance of reprisals, including terrorist reprisals. It also worsens U.S. isolation in international politics.

Supporting or participating in an Israeli attack on Iran would further undermine U.S. claims to be in favor of peace and observance of a rules-based international order. It would mean attacking the country that in this confrontation has exercised restraint in the interest of avoiding war and is firmly in support of ceasefires on each of the fronts seeing combat. It would mean aiding further attacks by the country that in the same confrontation has inflicted far more death and destruction, and done more to promote escalation of the violence, than any other in the region.

An attack on Iran would roil the oil market and cause economic dislocations that would reach the United States, especially but not solely if such an attack targeted Iranian oil facilities.

An attack would set back any chance for fruitful diplomacy involving Iran on matters such as security in the Persian Gulf region.

An attack would increase the chance that the Iranian regime would choose to develop a nuclear weapon. Nothing would be better designed to strengthen the arguments of those in Tehran willing to take that step than armed attacks demonstrating that Iran does not now have a sufficient deterrent.

Israel has already entrapped the United States to a large degree in its lethal ways in the Middle East, and the entrapment threatens to become deeper with the anticipated new attack on Iran. The entrapment would not have been possible without mismanagement of the U.S.-Israeli relationship on the Washington end. President Biden’s approach of holding Netanyahu close in the hope of influencing his policies has failed. It also has been counterproductive. In the absence of any willingness to employ the leverage that U.S. material aid to Israel represents, all the bear-hugging and expressions of support have only reassured Netanyahu that he can continue to prosecute his wars and ignore American calls for restraint without losing that aid.

It is refreshing to see reports that at least within the Department of Defense there is some recognition that the policy has been counterproductive by emboldening Israel to escalate. It is perhaps unsurprising that the department whose personnel would be on the front line of any expanded warfare involving the United States is more willing than others to recognize the nature and sources of the violence plaguing the Middle East and the need to deter or restrain Israel rather than embolden it. One can only hope that this willingness will spread more widely in policymaking circles.

Putin To Meet Iran Pres, Strike Iran Delayed; West Debates Kiev Escalation; Central Toretsk Falls

Israel's War on Gaza and Beyond Has Cost US Taxpayers At Least $22.76 Billion

U.S. armed aid to Israel and related spending on American militarism in the Middle East cost taxpayers at least $22.76 billion over the past year, according to new research published Monday.

The Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs—which has long been the premier source for statistics on the human and economic costs of ongoing U.S.-led post-9/11 wars and militarism in the Middle East and beyond—called the $22.76 billion estimate "conservative."

"This figure includes the $17.9 billion the U.S. government has approved in security assistance for Israeli military operations in Gaza and elsewhere since October 7—substantially more than in any other year since the U.S. began granting military aid to Israel in 1959," report authors Linda Bilmes, William Hartung, and Stephen Semler wrote. "Yet the report describes how this is only a partial amount of the U.S. financial support provided during this war."

BREAKING: One year after Oct. 7, our new analysis reveals that the cost of war in Gaza and beyond to U.S. taxpayers is conservatively estimated to be $22.76 billion… and counting. [THREAD} https://t.co/92XL9eBpOL pic.twitter.com/M7pFVc2obB

— The Costs of War Project (@CostsOfWar) October 7, 2024

In addition to the repeated multibillion-dollar rounds of military aid to Israel, related U.S. operations in the region, particularly bombing and shipping defense in and near Yemen—where Houthi rebels have attacked maritime commerce and launched missiles at Israel—have cost over $2 billion since last October.

"It has been difficult for the U.S. public, journalists, and members of Congress to get an accurate understanding of the amount of military equipment and financial assistance that the U.S. government has provided to Israel's military during the past year of war," the report states. "There is likewise little U.S. public awareness of the costs of the United States military's own related operations in the region, particularly in and around Yemen."

The analysis adds that regional hostilities "have escalated to become the most sustained military campaign by U.S. forces since the 2016-19 air war" against the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ...

Although the Costs of War Project report mainly covers U.S. aid to Israel since last October, it also notes that since 1948—the year the modern state of Israel was founded, largely through the ethnic cleansing of Palestine's Arabs—American taxpayers have contributed over a quarter trillion inflation-adjusted dollars to the key Mideast ally. ...

The new report comes less than two weeks after Israel secured yet another U.S. armed aid package, this one worth $8.7 billion. Meanwhile, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it faced a nearly $9 billion shortfall for Hurricane Helene relief efforts.

Ta-Nehisi Coates: I Was Told Palestine Was Complicated. Visiting Revealed a Simple, Brutal Truth

West Bank: Armed settlers attack Palestinians on first day of olive harvest

As the olive harvest season began in Palestine, Hasem Salama took his family to their land in the al-Lubban al-Gharbi village, northwest of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Before they could begin picking their olives, more than 50 masked and armed Israeli settlers appeared as soon as they arrived on Saturday morning. They attacked them and beat them without justification, Salama said, leaving 11 people wounded, including women and a child.

"My nephew, who is seven years old, suffered bruises after they beat him without hesitation,” Salama told Middle East Eye. “Two of the women sustained injuries to their hands during the barbaric attack," he added.

When they tried to push back against the attackers, the settlers intensified their assault, swinging iron pipes at the Palestinian residents. Many people suffered bone fractures, including Salama, whose legs were wounded, leaving him unable to stand.

Israeli forces eventually arrived at the scene. However, eyewitnesses reported that they sided with the settlers, helping to expel the residents from the area without arresting any of the attackers.

Whose Lives Matter the Most & Least in the Middle East?

President Sheinbaum’s Vision for a More Sovereign Mexico ‘Will be a Fight’ with the US

Georgia supreme court reinstates six-week abortion ban

Just one week after a Georgia judge restored broad access to abortion in the state by blocking its six-week abortion ban, the Georgia supreme court ruled on Monday to reinstate the ban.

The ban will take effect at 5pm local time on Monday and remain in effect while litigation over it plays out.

Abortion rights supporters quickly condemned the decision, which also came down weeks after news broke that two Georgia mothers, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, died after being unable to access legal abortions.

Salmon swim freely in Klamath River for first time in more than 100 years

For the first time in more than a century, salmon are swimming freely along the Klamath River and its tributaries, just days after the largest dam removal project in US history was completed.

Researchers determined that Chinook salmon began migrating on 3 October into previously inaccessible habitat above the site of the former Iron Gate dam, one of four towering dams near the California-Oregon border that were demolished as part of a national movement to let rivers return to their natural flow and to restore ecosystems for fish and other wildlife.

“It’s been over one hundred years since a wild salmon last swam through this reach of the Klamath River,” said Damon Goodman, a regional director for the nonprofit conservation group California Trout. “I am incredibly humbled to witness this moment and share this news, standing on the shoulders of decades of work by our Tribal partners, as the salmon return home.”

The dam removal project was completed on 2 October, marking a major victory for local tribes that fought for decades to free hundreds of miles of the Klamath. Through protests, testimony and lawsuits, the tribes showcased the environmental devastation caused by the four hydroelectric dams, especially to salmon.

Scientists will use sonar technology to continue to track migrating fish including Chinook salmon, Coho salmon and steelhead trout throughout the fall and winter to provide “important data on the river’s healing process,” Goodman said in a statement. “While dam removal is complete, recovery will be a long process.”

Climate warning as world’s rivers dry up at fastest rate for 30 years

Rivers dried up at the highest rate in three decades in 2023, putting global water supply at risk, data has shown. Over the past five years, there have been lower-than-average river levels across the globe and reservoirs have also been low, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) State of Global Water Resources report.

In 2023, more than 50% of global river catchment areas showed abnormal conditions, with most being in deficit. This was similar in 2022 and 2021. Areas facing severe drought and low river discharge conditions included large territories of North, Central and South America; for instance, the Amazon and Mississippi rivers had record low water levels. On the other side of the globe, in Asia and Oceania, the large Ganges, Brahmaputra and Mekong river basins experienced lower-than-normal conditions almost over the entire basin territories.

Climate breakdown appears to be changing where water goes, and helping to cause extreme floods and droughts. 2023 was the hottest year on record, with rivers running low and countries facing droughts, but it also brought devastating floods across the globe. ...

In the UK, Ireland, Finland and Sweden, there was above-normal discharge, which is the volume of water flowing through a river at a given point in time.

“Water is the canary in the coalmine of climate change,” said the WMO secretary general, Celeste Saulo. “We receive distress signals in the form of increasingly extreme rainfall, floods and droughts which wreak a heavy toll on lives, ecosystems and economies. Melting ice and glaciers threaten long-term water security for many millions of people. And yet we are not taking the necessary urgent action."

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Israel Lobbied Britain on War-Crimes Arrest Laws

Patrick Lawrence: Powerlessness

The Year After Al-Aqsa Flood

Beirut’s Dahiyeh left deserted and destroyed after brutal Israeli bombardment

Double Standards and Distortion: How the NYT Misreports Sexual Violence in Israel/Palestine

What did Al Jazeera’s investigation into Israeli war crimes in Gaza reveal?

How Will Türkiye Respond to War in Lebanon (and Renewed Destabilization of Syria)?

The Leadership Competence Crisis

Book Review: The Mysterious Impact of Music on the Brain and Body

Hillary DEMANDS 'TOTAL CONTROL' Of Social Media

CIA CAUGHT Covering Up Lee Harvey Oswald Critical Backstory

Yes Biden Gave FEMA Money To Illegal Immigrants! CAUGHT Lying About It On Video!

A Little Night Music

Lyn Collins - Mama Feelgood

Lyn Collins - Do Your Thing

Lyn Collins - Take Me Just As I Am

Lyn Collins - Rock Me Again & Again & Again & Again & Again & Again

Lyn Collins - Think (About It)

Lyn Collins - Me And My Baby Got A Good Thing Goin'

Lyn Collins - Wheels of Life

Lyn Collins - Ain't No Sunshine

Lyn Collins - I'll Take You There