It was anger that won Trump this election

 Al Jazeera English

Despite obviously belonging to America’s financial super-elite, the billionaire Trump has wooed a wide sector of the domestic working class into viewing him as a saviour from their economic plight in a plutocratic system of which he himself is an integral part. The indignant appeal to “Make America Great Again” deliberately ignores the fact that there was never anything great about a nation predicated on mass socioeconomic inequality, where Republicans and Democrats alike perpetuate plutocracy under the guise of democracy. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

It’s raining bombs in a city by the sea

 Al Jazeera English

On Monday, the Israeli military set about maniacally bombarding the southern Lebanese coastal city of Tyre, striking residential buildings left and right and converting the scene into a typical Israeli-induced horrorscape. Since the beginning of the genocide in neighbouring Palestine in October last year, Israel has killed more than 2,700 people in Lebanon, the majority of them over the past month and a half.

An ancient Phoenician port sacked by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, Tyre is of course no stranger to destruction. The city bears three sets of Roman and Byzantine ruins – one of which incidentally played host to a more unique form of destruction in 2013 when the convoy belonging to then-United States ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly managed to damage the historical site while inexplicably driving over it. This particular episode prompted the Jadaliyya headline: “Tires over Tyre: US Ambassador Ruins Ruins.”

Given its fierce partnership with the state of Israel, the US has certainly had an outsized hand in ruining Lebanon over the course of contemporary history. In 1982, for example, the US greenlit the Israeli invasion that killed tens of thousands of people in the country. And during Israel’s 34-day war on Lebanon in 2006, which killed approximately 1,200 people, the US expedited bomb deliveries to the Israeli military while agitating to delay a ceasefire – an approach the Joe Biden administration has now basically supercharged to accommodate the genocide in Gaza. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH. 

In Midst of Palestinian Geocide, Late Hamas Leader Scolded for ‘Eradicating’ Israel

 FAIR

The Israeli military killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip on October 17, and it didn’t take long for the usual media suspects to line up with their anti-eulogies.

Reuters (10/18/24), for example, produced an obituary headlined “Yahya Sinwar: The Hamas Leader Committed to Eradicating Israel Is Dead”—a less than charming use of terminology in light of the genocide Israel is currently perpetrating in Gaza.

Since last October, more than 42,000 Palestinians have officially been, um, eradicated—although according to a Lancet study (7/20/24; Al Jazeera, 7/8/24) published in July, the true death toll could well exceed 186,000. Per the view of Reuters, this is really the fault of Sinwar, a “ruthless enforcer” ... 

Never mind that Sinwar’s elimination will have no impact on the genocide, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear: “Today we have settled the score. Today evil has been dealt a blow, but our task has still  not been completed.” READ MORE AT FAIR.

Yahya Sinwar may be dead, but there is no end in sight to this genocide

 Al Jazeera English

On Thursday, October 17, Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip – the latest “high-value target” in a genocidal war that has dispensed with more than 42,000 Palestinian lives in just over a year and that has now spread to Lebanon.

Of course, the elimination of Sinwar hardly spells the end of genocide, as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear in his post-assassination announcement: “Today we have settled the score. Today evil has been dealt a blow, but our task has still not been completed.”

Fortunately for the powers that be in a nation whose very existence is predicated on perpetual slaughter, the Israeli “task” will never be fully completed – at least as long as there are still Palestinians and fellow Arabs committed to resisting Israel’s bloodthirsty efforts.

And yet Sinwar’s killing will make it ever more difficult for Israel to continue to justify its current war on Gaza, not that justification ever really matters to Israel’s primary international backer, the United States of America. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The United States is already at war

 Al Jazeera  English

Yesterday, Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel in retaliation for Israel’s assassination in Beirut of Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah last week and its assassination in Tehran of Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh in July.

United States President Joe Biden instructed the US military to assist Israel in neutralising the missiles – not that Israel is not already equipped with various layers of ultra-sophisticated protection against incoming projectiles, which permit it to go about slaughtering folks left and right while suffering minimal damage in return. . . .

Of course, not once has it occurred to the Biden administration to meticulously thwart Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where officially more than 41,000 people have been killed in less than a year although the true death toll is without a doubt exorbitantly higher. Nor has the oh-so-skilled US military deemed it necessary to interfere in the wanton butchery currently going down in Lebanon, where Israel just killed more than 700 people in less than a week. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Israel’s assassinations can’t kill resistance

 Al Jazeera English

After assassinating Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah in a devastating air strike on Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighbourhood, the Israeli army took to the platform X to boast triumphantly that Nasrallah would “no longer be able to terrorize the world”.

Granted, the objective observer would be forgiven for failing to detect how it is that Nasrallah is supposedly responsible for terrestrial terror when he is not the one who has been presiding over genocide in the Gaza Strip for nearly a year. Nor, obviously, is he the one who just killed more than 700 people in Lebanon in less than a week.

Israel takes the credit for all of that, just as it takes the credit for pulverising numerous residential buildings and their inhabitants in the quest to kill Nasrallah – as good an example as any of “terrorising the world”. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Big Brother without borders: Israel’s psychopathic warfare in Lebanon

Al Jazeera English

Exactly one week ago, on Tuesday, Israel remotely detonated hundreds of handheld pagers used by members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, killing at least 12 people. Two children were among the fatalities of the terror attack, which also wounded thousands and overwhelmed Lebanese hospitals.

The following day, walkie-talkies exploded across the country, ending 20 lives. Two days after that, on Friday, an air strike on a densely populated neighbourhood in the Lebanese capital of Beirut killed scores of people. And on Monday, the Israeli military commenced a patently psychopathic bombing spree over various sectors of Lebanon that has killed more than 550 people, including 50 children. . . .

To be sure, the very existence of the state of Israel has always been predicated on mass killing – an arrangement that has produced, inter alia, the continuing genocide in the Gaza Strip, where officially more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in less than one year but the true death toll is, no doubt, many times higher. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH. 

The Lebanon pager attack: Israel’s terror playbook strikes again

 Al Jazeera English

On Tuesday, hundreds of handheld pagers used by members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah simultaneously exploded across Lebanon, killing at least 12 people, including two children. Nearly 3,000 others were wounded, many of them critically.

No one has claimed responsibility for the operation, but it is not hard to guess who is behind it: Israel, a nation that specialises in terrorising selected Arab civilian populations under the pretence of fighting terror. Since October of last year, this same nation has busied itself carrying out genocide in the Gaza Strip, where officially more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed but the true death toll is likely many times higher.

And while the ostensible targets of Tuesday’s attack were pager-wielding Hezbollah members, it was carried out with the full knowledge that the fallout would be indiscriminate and that massive civilian casualties would ensue. But that is the whole point of terrorism, is it not? READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Netanyahu and the Israeli protesters are on the same genocidal page

 Al Jazeera English

In July 2014, shortly after the kickoff of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” in the Gaza Strip – a 51-day affair that ultimately killed 2,251 Palestinians, including 551 children – Danish journalist Nikolaj Krak penned a dispatch from Israel for the Copenhagen-based Kristeligt Dagblad newspaper.

Describing the scene on a hill on the outskirts of the Israeli city of Sderot near the Gaza border, Krak noted that the area had been “transformed into something that most closely resembles the front row of a reality war theatre”. Israelis had “dragged camping chairs and sofas” to the hilltop, where some spectators sat “with crackling bags of popcorn”, while others partook of hookahs and cheerful banter. Fiery, earth-shaking air strikes on Gaza across the way were met with cheers and “solid applause”.

To be sure, Israelis have always enjoyed a good murderous spectacle – which is hardly surprising for a nation whose very existence is predicated on mass slaughter. But as it turns out, the applause is not quite so solid when Israeli lives are caught up in the explosive apocalyptic display.

For the past 11 months, Israel’s “reality war theatre” has offered a view of all-out genocide in the Gaza Strip, where the official death toll has reached nearly 41,000. A July Lancet study found that the true number of deaths may well top 186,000 – and that is only if the killing ends soon.

Now, massive protests have broken out across Israel demanding that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enact a ceasefire and hostage deal to free the remaining 100 or so Israeli captives held in Gaza. On Sunday, when the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six captives, CNN reported that some 700,000 protesters had taken to the streets across the country. And on Monday, a general strike spearheaded by Israel’s primary labour union succeeded in shutting much of the economy down for several hours.

Although certain wannabe peaceniks among the international commentariat have blindly attributed the protests to a desire to end the bloodshed, the fact of the matter is that Palestinian blood is not high on the list of concerns. Rather, the only lives that matter in the besieged, pulverised, and genocide-stricken Gaza Strip are the lives of the captives – whose captivity, it bears underscoring, is entirely a result of Israeli policy and Israel’s unceasing sadistic treatment of Palestinians.  READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

The US is Israel’s accomplice, not a ceasefire mediator

 Al Jazeera English

On July 21, 2006, nine days into the 34-day Israeli war on Lebanon that killed 1,200 people, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice opined that “an immediate ceasefire without political conditions does not make sense”.

In response to a journalist’s question at a press briefing, the secretary declared that she had “no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante”. . . .

Fast forward 15 years to Israel’s straight-up genocide in the Gaza Strip, which is undoubtedly a more effective means of eradicating the “status quo ante” – at least if we take “status quo ante” to mean Gaza and its inhabitants. With official fatalities now exceeding 40,000 Palestinians and predictions that the real death toll may in fact be many times higher, an immediate ceasefire is the only non-genocidal option on the table.

And while US President Joe Biden has repeatedly stressed the urgency of just such a ceasefire, it is a bit tricky to stop a war when you have just approved an additional $20bn in weapons transfers to the party that has officially killed nearly 17,000 Palestinian children since October. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.