Monthly Archives: October 2023

What was the point of the Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7?

It’s a question This Writer has asked many times in the days since it happened: what was Hamas trying to achieve when its people invaded Israel, attacked the IDF and took hostages back to Gaza? What did that organisation’s leaders think would be the result?

October 7 was an Israeli holiday – Yom Kippur – and also the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. As such, it was always possible that some kind of violence would happen.

Indeed, Israel was warned of a Hamas attack by Egypt – repeatedly – in the period before the attack. The Israeli government has denied this, but here‘s what an Egyptian intelligence official told The Times of Israel:

Jerusalem had ignored repeated warnings that the Gaza-based terror group was planning “something big.”

The Egyptian official said Egypt, which often serves as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, had spoken repeatedly with the Israelis about “something big,” without elaborating.

“We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the content of sensitive intelligence discussions with the media, told The Associated Press.

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This was confirmed by the USA:

“We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen,” Republican Michael McCaul tells reporters following a closed-door intelligence briefing for lawmakers on the crisis.

“I don’t want to get too much into classified, but a warning was given,” he says.

Given Israel’s propensity for lying, I think we should believe the Egyptians and the Americans on this.

So, with Israel looking the other way, Hamas’s Qassam Brigade launched an offensive with two strategies (this from The Cradle):

There is little to no credible evidence that Palestinian fighters had a plan to – or deliberately sought to – kill or harm unarmed Israeli civilians on 7 October. From the available footage, we witness them engaging primarily with armed Israeli forces, accounting for the deaths of hundreds of occupation soldiers. As Qassam Brigades’ Spokesman Abu Obeida made clear on 12 October:

“Al-Aqsa Flood operation aimed to destroy the Gaza Division (an Israeli army unit on Gaza’s borders) which was attacked at 15 points, followed by attacking 10 further military intervention points. We attacked the Zikim site and several other settlements outside the Gaza Division headquarters.”

Abu Obeida and other resistance officials claims that the other key objective of their operation was to take Israeli prisoners that they could exchange for the approximately 5,300 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli detention centers, many of whom are women and children.

Hamas Deputy Head of the Political Bureau of Saleh Al-Arouri, in an interview after the operation, stressed: “We have a large and qualitative number and senior officers. All we can say now is that the freedom of our prisoners is at the doorstep.”

I can see no sense in either of these objectives.

Destroying an arm of the Israeli Defence Force was only ever going to provoke violent retaliation – as we have seen over the 24 days since the incursion.

And taking hostages? In case you haven’t noticed, we have multiple eyewitness reports of IDF troops shooting, or even shelling, Israeli civilians in order to eliminate Hamas operatives. Here’s another one:

Even at the Israeli “peace rave”, which has been cited as the single deadliest attack committed by Palestinian fighters during their operation, videos emerged that appeared to show Israeli forces opening fire through a crowd of unarmed civilians, toward targets they believed to be Hamas members. ABC News also reported that an Israeli tank had headed to the site of the festival.

Whichever way you stack the information, it doesn’t make sense.

Hamas must have known an attack of the limited nature available to it could only lead to a response from Israel that would be several orders of magnitude more deadly, so launching the offensive seems to be insanity.

Israel’s behaviour seems equally irrational. Knowing the attack was coming, its leaders chose to ignore the warnings, wait for the attack to happen, and then murder their own fellow Israelis in order to manufacture international outrage to support a genocidal response.

Can anybody find anything wrong with my reasoning here?

I think there’s at least one very important piece of information missing from this. If anybody has it, please pass it on.

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Pensioners take note: evidence shows Boris Johnson wanted Covid-19 to get rid of you

Get the message? You never saw Boris Johnson actually sitting over a dying pensioner making rude gestures at them (and the rest of us), but he might as well have done it. At the time, This Site wrote: “Until pensioners realise that his policies on Covid-19 add up to the same, he’ll carry on – aided by the papers and TV channels that keep the over-60s tranquillised – easy prey for the cull.” How true that was.

Those pensioners who have supported the Conservatives with their votes may be forced to think again after the Covid-19 inquiry heard that former Tory prime minister Boris Johnson not only thought the disease was “nature’s way of dealing with old people” – but was agreeing with other Tory MPs in doing so.

It’s a staggering act of contempt for a sector of society that has propped up one Conservative government after another – and that comprises the vast majority of the Tory Party’s membership.

The BBC tells us:

The allegation comes from diary entries from former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance.

In August 2020, Sir Patrick wrote that Mr Johnson was “obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life and the economy going”.

“Quite bonkers set of exchanges,” he said, referring to messages exchanged between Mr Johnson and others in a WhatsApp group.

In later notes from December 2020, Sir Patrick wrote that Mr Johnson said his party “thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just nature’s way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them”.

Another note from December says Mr Johnson agreed with the Conservative Party’s chief whip when he said “we should let the old people get it and protect others”.

This message – that the government should leave senior citizens to die rather than try to protect the population as a whole – will come particularly hard to the families of the 30,000 people who died in care homes for the elderly after then-Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s “protective ring” around them turned out to be nonexistent.

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The BBC quotes Brenda Doherty, spokesperson for Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, who said reading Mr Johnson’s messages felt like being “punched in the stomach”.

“During the first and second waves of the pandemic the UK had one of the highest death tolls per person in the world from Covid-19 and it’s clear just how personally responsible for that he was,” Ms Doherty said.

Also providing testimony was former Prime Ministerial advisor and Barnard Castle visitor Dominic Cummings, who said there was no plan to protect vulnerable people, such as the victims of domestic abuse, in a national lockdown.

“I would say that entire question was appallingly neglected,” Mr Cummings said.

Boris Johnson – and more importantly, now that he has replaced Johnson as prime minister, Rishi Sunak – will face the inquiry later in the year, which is more than can be said for some of the key figures in the handling of the pandemic.

Cabinet Office Secretary Simon Case decided he was “too poorly” to testify:

And Hancock refused to appear unless he had immunity from the law – implying that his actions during the pandemic may have criminal consequences:

One element that is no surprise is the behaviour of Boris Johnson. Former Downing Street Communications Director Lee Cain, giving his evidence today (October 31, 2023), said

the pandemic was the “wrong crisis” for Mr Johnson and he was a “challenging character to work with” because he kept changing his mind.

This should come as no surprise because we already have plenty of evidence that Johnson was completely incapable of leading during the crisis and needed to be led through every step of the way by aides who feared that he would depart from logic (and indeed sanity) at any moment:

This is a man who was presented to the nation as the best possible choice to lead the UK in the 2019 general election!

I wonder how many people, presented with the evidence to this inquiry, would prefer Jeremy Corbyn in hindsight.

In any case, the Covid Inquiry is heating up – but will any political heads roll as a result of the fatal errors that are being discovered on a daily basis?

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Andy McDonald suspended by Labour Party over allegedly ‘offensive’ speech

Andy McDonald: more integrity than Keir Starmer. It’s not saying much – Richard Nixon had more integrity than Starmer and he needed an assistant to screw him into his trousers every morning.

Outspoken MP Andy McDonald has been suspended by the Labour Party over a speech in which he allegedly mentioned the pro-Palestine chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in an offensive way.

According to the BBC,

The MP for Middlesbrough used the phrase “between the river and the sea” in a speech at a pro-Palestinian rally.

Critics of a chant which contains the phrase argue it implicitly calls for the destruction of Israel.

But Mr McDonald said his words were intended as “a heartfelt plea for an end to the killings” in the region.

He will now sit as an independent MP, pending an investigation.

In his speech at a demonstration on Saturday, Mr McDonald, a former shadow minister under Jeremy Corbyn, said: “We will not rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty.”

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It’s tenuous, isn’t it?

Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell thinks so:

And there’s this (the Michael RentaMob tweet below):

It seems to This Writer that Keir Starmer was looking for an excuse to make an example of somebody.

McDonald’s words were not anti-Semitic; that is abundantly clear. Keir Starmer suspended him for calling for peace in Israel and Palestine.

Today (October 31, 2023), Starmer is giving a speech on Labour’s position regarding the Israel-Gaza conflict (not Israel-Hamas; remember that Israel is just killing innocent civilians and any Hamas members who get caught in Israeli fire are victims of coincidence).

McDonald’s suspension seems nothing more than a publicity stunt by a Labour leader who is struggling to retain his support base after a shocking faux pas of his own when he supported Israeli war crimes.

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How many Israelis were killed on October 7, again? And, how many were children?

*Caveat: this article is based on information that may change as more becomes available.

Duper’s delight: Look at that smug smile – Benjamin Netanyahu may have been telling fibs again.

It seems Israel may have been lying to us all (surprise, surprise!) about what happened on October 7 – the number of civilian fatalities, the number that were children, and what happened to them.

The following material comes from a website called The Cradle, which suggests that “evidence is now emerging that up to half the Israelis killed were combatants; that Israeli forces were responsible for some of their own civilian deaths [we knew that, right?]; and that Tel Aviv disseminated false ‘Hamas atrocities’ stories to justify its devastating air assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”

It claims that information from the Israeli news organisation Haaretz showed that, by October 23, only 683 Israeli deaths could be verified – not the 1,400 claimed by Israel’s government:

Of these, 331 casualties – or 48.4 percent – have been confirmed to be soldiers and police officers, many of them female. Another 13 are described as rescue service members, and the remaining 339 are ostensibly considered to be civilians.

There are also so far no recorded deaths of children under the age of three, which throws into question the Israeli narrative that babies were targeted by Palestinian resistance fighters. Of the 683 total casualties reported thus far, seven were between the ages of 4 and 7, and nine between the ages of 10 and 17. The remaining 667 casualties appear to be adults.

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So what about all those gruesome claims? Rapes, beheaded babies?

Aviva Klompas, a former speechwriter for the Israeli mission to the UN, was the first Israeli of note to spread the claim that there were reports of “Israeli girls being raped and their bodies dragged through the street.”

She posted this on X at 9:18 PM (Palestine time), on 7 October, although an op-ed Klompa published with Newsweek at 12:28 AM (Palestine time), on 8 October, made no mention of any sexual violence.

Klompas is also the co-founder of Boundless Israel, a “think-action tank” that works “to revitalize Israel education and take bold collective action to combat Jew-hatred.” An “unapologetically Zionist” charitable group that works to promote Israeli narratives on social media.

The one case touted as proof of rape was that of a young German-Israeli woman named Shani Louk, who was filmed face down in the back of a pickup truck and was widely assumed dead.

It was unclear whether the fighters filmed with Louk in the Gaza-bound vehicle were members of Hamas, as they do not sport the uniforms or insignia of the Al-Qassam troops identifiable in other Hamas videos – some even wore casual civilian clothing and sandals.

Later, her mother claimed to have evidence that her daughter was still alive, but had suffered a severe head wound. This rings true with information released by Hamas that indicated Louk was being treated for her injuries at an unspecified Gaza hospital.

Complicating matters further, on the day these rape allegations arose, Israelis would not have had access to this information. Their armed forces had not yet entered many, if not most, of the areas liberated by the resistance and were still engaged in armed clashes with them on multiple fronts.

Nevertheless, these rape claims took on a life of their own, with even US President Joe Biden alleging, during a speech days later, that Israeli women were “raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies” by Hamas fighters. It is important to note that The Forward’s article on 11 October reported that the Israeli military acknowledged they had no evidence of such allegations at that point.

When the army later made its own allegations of decapitations, foot amputations, and rape, Reuters pointed out that “the military personnel overseeing the identification process didn’t present any forensic evidence in the form of pictures or medical records.” To date, there is no credible evidence of these atrocities that has been presented.

Other outrageous allegations, such as the story of Hamas “beheading 40 babies‘ made headlines and the front pages of countless western news outlets. Even Biden claimed to have seen “confirmed photos of terrorists beheading babies.” The claims trace back to Israeli reserve settler and soldier David Ben Zion, who has previously incited violent riots against Palestinians and called for the West Bank town of Huwara to be wiped out. No evidence was ever produced to support these claims and the White House itself confirmed later that Joe Biden had never seen such photos.

What do you think?

We have first-hand information from former Hamas hostages that they have been well-treated. It seems that, besides the destruction of the IDF’s Gaza Division, the aim of the Hamas incursion on October 7 was to take live hostages that could be exchanged with the circa-5,300 Palestinians said to be inhabiting Israeli jails for no good reason, many of them women and children.

If that’s true, then Hamas would have wanted to avoid causing serious harm to civilians.

So – if this information is accurate, then Israel’s spokespeople have lied about the number and nature of the people who were killed, and in their claims of atrocities inflicted upon the dead.

Considering how other claims by Israel’s government have also fallen apart (which one is your favourite?)…

Well, what do you think? Comment using the box below.

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Protesters have their say on Israel/Palestine – and it’s not what we’ve been told

Groundswell: a through-the-window view of Westminster Bridge during the pro-Palestine demonstration.

Props to Not The Andrew Marr Show for putting together video clips of the enormous march in support of Palestine on Saturday (October 28, 2023), and interview footage of the participants.

This Writer saw a post on the social media in which a commentator suggested that one person calling for – it was either Jihad, or the dissolution of Israel – was speaking for all the other participants in the march; around half a million people.

Of course that person wasn’t speaking for the majority. It was a lone voice that the mass media chose to use, because it tarred everybody there with a socially-unacceptable demand.

Well, here’s the other side.

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The information supplied to me with the clip stated: “This footage has been put together to show the views of the clear majority of the population who are not being heard on mainstream media.

“Following Israel’s siege and bombardment of Gaza, over half a million people attended a demonstration in London calling for an immediate ceasefire. This was by far the largest demonstration in support of Palestine.

“It features interviews with protestors as well as speakers including Husam Zomlot, Ismail Patel, Mick Lynch, Matt Wrack, Diane Abbott MP, Richard Burgon MP, Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, Zarah Sultana MP, Apsana Begum MP, John Finucane MP, Dr Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini and Jeremy Corbyn MP.”

It’s fairly long – 34 minutes or so – and I would suggest that it is well worth your time; it shows you the real views of people who have been de-humanised, alienated and ‘othered’ by the right-wing pro-Israel press.

Footage from Platform Films (producers of Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie and Carlos Soto). Commissioned by Crispin Flintoff.

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If Downing St is worried about ‘from the river’ chant, why not get a court verdict on it, like the Netherlands?

Rishi Sunak: he’s worried again.

There is power in two-line rhyming chants – to sway public opinion, for example – so on the face of it, it isn’t unreasonable for Rishi Sunak to be concerned.

He’s probably worried that it’s encouraging people to support Palestine rather than his Israeli buddies. Hmm… there might be something in that!

So this should be no surprise:

Downing Street has expressed concerns over the chant “from the river to the sea,” describing it as “deeply offensive” to many, amid growing controversy surrounding the rhetoric used in recent pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said it is a matter for the police to decide on the appropriate response when confronted with the use of such chants during public demonstrations.

Leaving it to the police is okay as far as it goes – but suppose they arrest someone, it goes to court, and the judge throws out the charge?

Then, Sunak will have wasted the time of everybody involved – and people like This Writer will be accusing him (rightly) of irresponsibility.

So why not go Dutch?

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By that, I mean he should simply refer the question to the courts in advance, as has happened in the Netherlands:

I reported on it before, here.

Oh, but wait!

The ruling was that the pro-Palestinian slogans … “are subject to various interpretations” and “relate to the state of Israel and possibly to people with Israeli citizenship, but do not relate to Jews because of their race or religion”.

A Novara Media article I quoted also stated: “As to the claim that the slogan expresses a desire for Israel’s ‘destruction’, the historian of Palestine Maha Nassar has suggested that this eliminationist interpretation may derive from a post-six-day-war Israeli propaganda campaign that asserted that Palestinians wished to ‘throw Jews into the sea’.”

So the claim that the chant is anti-Semitic may be nothing more than Israeli propaganda?

I’d call that interesting.

Sunak, with his vested interest in supporting Israel, might have another word for it. That may be why he hasn’t taken the matter to the courts.

Source: Chant ‘from the river to the sea’ deeply offensive to many, says Downing Street

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Israel has now killed at least 3,195 children in Gaza – and taken 1,200 hostages

Words should not be necessary: this image of a grieving Palestinian mother is not following the massacre of October 7 but used for illustrative purposes. Any images following the actual events are likely to be too disturbing for publication.

The figures come from Save the Children:

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Here are the names of the murdered – yes, murdered – children, as gathered by a Jewish organisation. The list was of those known to have been killed by last Thursday (October 26). I await claims that the Gaza Ministry of Health is lying – probably from people who say every word that comes out of Tel Aviv is God’s truth:

Here’s a response to the deaths, by a doctor who was himself a child refugee:

And here’s the Israeli government line on murdering children:

Oh… and you know that line about Hamas taking more than 230 people hostage?

What about the 1,200 that Israel has taken from the West Bank since October 7?

More than 90 people have been killed, mostly in altercations with the IDF, and 1,200 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the conflict broke out, according to Palestinian data.

In numbers alone, Israel has caused far more suffering to Palestine than the Palestinians have to Israel. When you hear the propaganda that is pushed on the mainstream media, just ask yourself: who are the victims here?

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What’s wrong with calling for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire?

Apocalypse now: how can anyone oppose a ceasefire when this hell is being rained on innocent men, women and children?

We’re hearing a huge number of calls for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas at the moment.

Is it practical? Some would say “no”. Is that because Hamas isn’t actually doing much firing, and Israel is having fun destroying buildings and murdering innocent Gazans?

Let’s see – starting with a bit of context:

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The United Nations has, in fact, passed a non-binding resolution calling for a ceasefire.

But the UK abstained for the stupidest reason possible:

Here’s how the vote went:

Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, who has relatives in Gaza who are living without clean drinking water, had something to say about this:

Meanwhile, ceasefire calls are mounting – many with well-reasoned thinking behind them:

But what about the demands that there should not be a ceasefire? Are these well-reasoned arguments?

I answered this one. Was it a good response?

Let’s cut through the nonsense here. According to our good friend Wikipedia – and I’ve changed the quote around to emphasise the point I want to make,

The immediate goal of a ceasefire is to stop violence, but the underlying purposes of ceasefires vary. An actor may not always intend for a ceasefire to advance the peaceful resolution of a conflict, but instead give the actor an upper hand in the conflict (for example, by re-arming and repositioning forces or attacking an unsuspecting adversary), which creates bargaining problems that may make ceasefires less likely to be implemented and less likely to be durable if implemented.

So the fears of the naysayers are valid, and we should remember that. But…

Ceasefires may be intended to meet short-term limited needs (such as providing humanitarian aid), manage a conflict to make it less devastating, or advance efforts to peacefully resolve a dispute.

So I’m also right. And if the weight of the international community is put behind such efforts, they might come to fruition.

The operative question, then, is: why are so many political actors so unwilling to try?

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Is your NHS information being set up for sale AGAIN?

Michelle Donelan: she says she won’t sell off your private NHS data without your consent. How would she go about getting that, then?

Every few years, this comes around.

It was suggested in 2016, and again in 2021, when the public made it very clear that we don’t want our NHS records to be sold to private companies.

Now, US artificial intelligence giant Palantir is saying it has developed systems that can use our data without anybody ever actually seeing it.

I’m not sure I understand how that works!

And that means I think we need more information about it.

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The BBC’s report is very vague:

Palantir is seeking to win a contract to provide AI software to bring NHS data together to improve services.

In what way? Like this, allegedly:

The Federated Data Platform (FDP) is software that will sit across NHS trusts and integrated care systems allowing them to connect data they already hold in a secure and safe environment. GP data will not be part of the national platform.

The software will be ‘federated’ across the NHS. This means that every hospital and integrated care board will have their own version of the platform which can connect and collaborate with other data platforms as a ‘federation’. This makes it easier for health and care organisations to work together, compare data, analyse it at different geographic, demographic and organisational levels and share and spread new effective digital solutions.

The federated data platform is not a data collection; it is software that will help to connect disparate sets of data and allow them to be used more effectively for care.

The NHS is made up of multiple organisations that use data every day to manage patient care and plan services. Historically, it has been held in different systems that do not speak to each other, creating burden for staff and delays to patient care. It also makes it difficult to work at scale and share information.

The Federated Data Platform will provide software to link these NHS trusts and regional systems and give us a consistent technical means of linking data that is already collected for patient care. Clinicians will easily have access to the information they need to do their job – in one place – freeing up time spent on administrative tasks and enabling them to deliver the most appropriate care for patients. GP data will not be part of the national platform.

So, what do you think?

Alex Karp, Palantir co-founder and chief executive, said:

“We’re the only company of our size and scale that doesn’t buy your data, doesn’t sell your data, doesn’t transfer it to any other company,” he said.

“That data belongs to the government of the United Kingdom.”

Mr Karp added: “The way our product is set up. I don’t have access to your data. Our product does not allow you to do that.”

Asked whether the data could be sold in the future. Mr Karp replied: “By the UK government, not by me. I don’t have the ability to do it.”

So, it could be sold, and this system makes it easier for that to happen.

Labour has said it won’t sell off people’s data. And Tory Science Secretary Michelle Donelan has said she won’t sell on people’s private data “without their consent”.

Do you feel reassured? Or do you think the Tories are planning a new way to trick you into giving away your information?

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Israel cut Gaza’s power, then sent an ‘urgent’ evacuation warning. Who could hear?

Between bombardments: this is northern Gaza. If you would not want to live in a place like this, how can you stand by and watch while others are forced to?

If I do this using posts from ‘X’ – that are time-stamped – hopefully it will make more sense than just telling the story myself.

Here’s the first:

That was 4.21am. Then this happened:

Who was supposed to hear that? They had no electricity to power their TVs and radios, and no Internet connectivity to hear it online.

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US and UK media personalities have been making this point:

Of course, there’s always some clever dick who thinks the leaflet campaign – papers dropped from the air onto the citizens of Gaza – should have been effective…

But people who had moved south had begun to move back north in defiance of it.

We can all see what was happening here, can’t we?

If not, here’s Adil Ray:

And as Israeli armed forces prepared to pound northern Gaza again, the citizens of that pummelled region were searching through the wreckage of their homes for survivors of the last attack – unaware that they were about to be hit again:

This is only happening because the rest of the world is doing nothing.

As Einstein once said: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

It could all be stopped tomorrow if our leaders could be bothered to reflect our opinions and decided to step in and demand peaceful negotiation.

It can work. It did in Northern Ireland.

And until it is tried, every drop of blood shed in Gaza is as much on Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer’s hands – and those of every other lily-livered political mouthpiece across the world – as it is on those of Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF.

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