In a dramatic dawn raid at around 06:30 local time on 7 October, Hamas launched the
Flood of Al-Aqsa’ military operation. Warning sirens broke the silence of Jerusalem (al-Quds so could be sacred silence), marking the beginning of what would become the most extraordinary incident in the history of the occupying state for 75 years. According to the spokesperson for the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, around 1,500 Palestinian fighters crossed the huge surrounding wall between Gaza and the Israeli-occupied areas.
This infiltration was not limited to the forces of Hamas, a number of armed fighters affiliated with other groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement also later crossed the walls surrounding Gaza, along with Palestinians not affiliated with any organization.
It became clear that this was not an ordinary resistance operation, when hundreds of videos quickly flooded social media, most of which were viewed by the world, showing dead Israeli soldiers and civilians, fierce gun battles between various sides and captured Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers in Gaza. Those videos were either taken on Israeli phones, or posted by Palestinian fighters filming their own operation.
Hours later, more outrageous and questionable claims began to emerge. Aviva Klompas, a former speech writer at the Israeli mission to the United Nations, was the first Israeli to publish the claim that there were reports of ‘Israeli girls being raped and their bodies dragged through the street”
Aviva Klompas, a former speech writer at the Israeli mission to the United Nations, was the first Israeli to publish the claim that there were reports of ‘Israeli girls being raped and their bodies dragged through the street”. She posted this on X (formerly known as Twitter) at 0918 local time on 7 October. In spite of these claims, Klompas published an opinion piece with the Newsweek magazine at 12:28 local time on 8 October, which didn’t mention any sexual violence.
Klompas is also one of the founders of the ‘Israel without Borders’ center, and that is a ‘center of reflection and action’ working to ‘encourage teaching in Israel and adoption of bold collective measures to confront Ant-isemitism’, in addition to being ‘unapologetically Zionist’ the group works to promote ‘Israeli’ narratives on Israeli social media.
One case that described evidence of ‘rape’ was that of a young ‘German Israeli’ woman named Shani Louk, who was photographed face down in the back of a pickup truck and was widely presumed dead.
It was not clear whether the fighters that were filmed in the car with Louk were members of Hamas as they did not wear the uniforms or insignia of the Qassam Brigades that are visible in other Hamas videos - some even wore casual civilian clothes and sandals.
Later, her mother claimed to have evidence that her daughter was still alive, but had suffered a serious wound to her head, and this matched information released by Hamas which indicated that Louk was receiving treatment for her injuries at an unspecified hospital in Gaza.
What complicates matters is that on the day that these rape allegations appeared, the Israelis did not appear to have any access to this information, and the IDF had not yet entered some or any of the areas which had been taken by the Palestinian forces. They were still engaged in armed clashes with them across multiple fronts.
However, these rape allegations took on their own momentum and US President Joe Biden even claimed during a speech days later that Israeli women had been ‘raped, assaulted, and paraded as trophies’ by Hamas fighters.
It is important to note that The Forward, news article on 11 October stated that IDF officials acknowledged it had no evidence of such allegations at the time.
When the IDF later made its claims of beheadings, amputations and rape, Reuters noted that "military personnel supervising the identification process did not provide any forensic evidence in the form of photographs or medical records." To date, there is no reliable evidence of these atrocities that have been presented.
Other outrageous claims, such as the story of Hamas “beheading 40 children,” made headlines and front pages in countless Western media outlets. Even Biden claimed to have seen “confirmed images of terrorists beheading children.” These allegations are attributed to the settler and Israeli reserve soldier David Ben Zion, who previously incited violent riots against the Palestinians and called for the erasure of the town of Huwara in the West Bank. No evidence was ever provided to support these claims, and the White House itself later confirmed that Joe Biden had never seen such images before.
Friendly Fire
In the time since the Hamas surprise attack on ‘Israel’ on 7 October, a clearer picture of what happened has begun to emerge - who died and who killed them.
Evidence now shows that up to half of those killed in the attack were combatants. There are also credible reports that the IDF were responsible for the killing of some civilians. Tel Aviv published false stories about “atrocities committed by Hamas” to justify its devastating air attack on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Rather than being a massacre solely against civilians as it was presented by Tel Aviv officials, incomplete figures published by the Hebrew-language newspaper Haaretz show that nearly half of the Israelis killed that day were actually combatants–soldiers or police.
In the meantime, there have been two weeks of blanket Western media reports that Hamas killed some 1,400 “Israeli civilians” during its October 7 military offensive, kindling anger and creating the right climate for Israel’s unrestrained destruction of the Gaza Strip and its civilian population. Accounts of the Israeli death toll have been filtered and they have been framed to suggest a mass slaughter of "civilians" occurred that day, with infants, children and women the main targets of attack.
Now, detailed statistics on the victims published by the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz paint a completely different picture. As of 23 October, the news agency published information on 683 Israelis killed during the Hamas-led attack, including their names and locations of their deaths on 7 October (see above).
Of these, 331 of those killed - or 48.4 percent - were confirmed to have been soldiers and police officers, many of them female. Another 13 are described as members of the rescue service, and the remaining 339 are apparently considered "civilians".
While this list is not comprehensive and represents only approximately half of Israel's reported death toll, approximately half of those killed in the clash were clearly identified as "Israeli combatants."
Additionally, very few children under the age of three have been confirmed among the dead from the October 7th attack–each one is an indefensible crime, but this data point casts doubt on the Israeli narrative that Qassam Brigade fighters specifically targeted children. Of the total 683 victims identified at the time of this writing, seven are between 4 and 7 years old, and nine are between 10 and 17 years old, while the remaining 667 dead appear to be adults.
In its report on the events at Kibbutz Be'eri, ABC News photographed artillery pieces resembling Israeli munitions outside a house that had been bombed. Reporter David Muir reported that masked Hamas fighters were found covered with plastic bags following the incident.
Additionally, videos of the scene show homes that appear to have been hit by munitions that Hamas fighters did not possess. Muir stated that about 14 people were taken hostage in one of the buildings by Palestinian fighters.
A Hebrew-language article published by Haaretz on October 20, which appears in English only in a must-read article in Monduweis, paints a very different story of what happened in Be'eri that day. A kibbutz resident who was away at the time of attack, but whose partner was killed in the clash, revealed the following details:
Photographs showing the destruction that occurred in Be'eri confirm his story. Only the Israeli army's heavy ammunition is capable of destroying residential homes in this way.
Yasmin Porat, a survivor of Kibbutz Be'eri, said in an interview with an Israeli radio program, hosted by the state broadcaster "Kan", that the "Israeli" forces "killed everyone, including the hostages," and added that "there was a lot of violence." “There was a very intense exchange of fire,” and tank shelling was even observed.
Porat had attended the Nova concert and witnessed the humane treatment during the various interviews she conducted with the Israeli media. She explained that when she was detained, Hamas fighters “guarded us,” telling her in Hebrew: “Look at me well, we will not kill you.” We want to take you to Gaza. We won't kill you. So be calm, you will not die.” She also added the following:
Increasingly, and to the horror of some Israeli officials and the Israeli media, Israeli eyewitnesses and survivors recount that they were treated well by Palestinian fighters. On 24 October, Kan expressed its regret that captive Yocheved Lifshitz, who had been released by Hamas the day before, was allowed to make statements live.
While she was handed over to Red Cross mediators, the elderly Israeli prisoner was caught on camera returning to squeeze the hand of her Hamas captor in her final farewell.
Lifshitz's live broadcast, in which she spoke of her two-week ordeal, further "humanized" her Hamas captors as she recounted her daily life with the fighters:
In many reports written by Western journalists on the ground, the majority of information regarding the actions of Hamas fighters comes from the IDF–an active participant in the conflict.
Emerging evidence now suggests that there is a high probability, particularly because of the extent of damage to infrastructure, that Israeli military forces either intentionally killed prisoners, fired at incorrect targets, or mistook Israelis for Palestinians in their firefights. If the only source of information for a serious claim is the Israeli army, it must be taken into account that it has reason to hide instances of friendly fire.
In the confusion following the attack, Israeli friendly fire was widespread. In the city of Ashkelon, on 8 October, Israeli soldiers shot a fellow soldier and shouted insults at the body of a man they thought was a Hamas fighter, but they later realized they had killed an Israeli. This is just one of three examples of friendly fire in one day, which led to the killing of Israelis by their own forces.
Amid the fog of war, parties to the conflict have different views on what happened during the initial raid and its aftermath. There is no dispute that Palestinian armed groups inflicted significant losses on the Israeli army, but there will be a lot of controversy surrounding everything else in the coming weeks and months.
As such, there is an urgent need for an independent and impartial international investigation, one that can access information from all parties involved in the conflict. Neither the Israelis nor the Americans will agree to this, which indicates that Tel Aviv wants to hide either the extent of its military failures or its manipulation of the early narrative to justify its response.
Meanwhile, Palestinian civilians in Gaza suffer from continuous indiscriminate attacks using the latest advanced heavy weapons, and live under the constant threat of irreversible forced displacement. These Israeli air strikes were only possible thanks to the flood of baseless “Hamas atrocities” stories that the media began circulating on and after 7 October.
A history of the blockade on the Gaza Strip
Israel began imposing the blockade on the Gaza Strip following the victory of the Hamas movement in the legislative elections in January 2006, and then tightened it after the movement took military control of the Strip in June 2007, declaring the Gaza Strip a “hostile entity” and imposing additional sanctions that severely affected the Gaza Strip. This action directly affected the basic rights of the population. It included imposing severe restrictions on the entry of fuel and goods and the movement of individuals to and from the Strip.
Over the years, the Israeli authorities have worked to consolidate the policy of isolating the Gaza Strip by separating it from the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in addition to controlling the quantity and quality of goods and materials entering the Gaza Strip and banning hundreds of different substances, which caused a comprehensive economic recession in the Strip, and a sharp rise in poverty and unemployment rates.
Moreover, the Israeli blockade has particularly affected the health sector in Gaza, as many basic medical items and supplies are not available, and many patients are forced to wait months for surgical operations. During the years of the siege, Israel launched four devastating military attacks on the Gaza Strip, resulting in the killing of thousands of civilians, the destruction of tens of thousands of homes and civilian facilities, and causing widespread destruction of infrastructure facilities.
Under international law, the Gaza Strip remains under Israeli occupation despite the unilateral withdrawal from the Strip in 2005, as Israel retained full control over the Strip’s land, sea and air outlets. Likewise, it controls Gaza's population registry, communications networks, and many other aspects of daily life and infrastructure. Instead of fulfilling its duty to protect the civilian population, Israel imposed on the population of the Gaza Strip an unprecedented form of collective punishment, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.
Israeli military operations on the Gaza Strip during the period of the blockade
Throughout the past 15 years, Israeli forces launched three major attacks on the Gaza Strip:
In 2008-2009, 2012, and 2014. Sporadic air and ground attacks occurred in between the two.
Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009) - The first major attacks began on 27 December, 2008 and lasted 21 days – ending on 18 January, 2009. Over the course of the three weeks, Israeli forces dropped approximately 1 million kilograms of explosives on the Strip, killing 1,436 Palestinians and wounding approximately 5,400 others, including a large number of women and children. About 4,100 homes were destroyed and another 17,500 homes were damaged.
Operation Pillar of Defense (2012) - The attack began on 14 November, 2012, and continued for eight days until 21 November 2012. Israeli Air Force strikes killed 162 Palestinians, wounded approximately 1,300 others, and destroyed 200 homes completely, and another 1,500 homes partially, during that period .
Operation Protective Edge (2014) - Israel's longest and most lethal offensive on Gaza began on 8 July, 2014, and lasted 51 days – ending on 26 August, 2014. During which 60,664 Israeli land, air and sea attacks were carried out, killing 2,147 Palestinians (entire families killed in some cases) and wounding 10,870 others. 17,123 homes were damaged, of which 2,465 were completely destroyed.
Operation Guardian of the Walls (2021) - The began on 10 May, 2021 and continued for 11 days, ending on 21 May. This attack was characterized by the Israeli army focusing its air and artillery attacks on the infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, especially streets, water wells, and public facilities, in addition to economic and production capabilities, which caused heavy losses in these areas.
The attack killed 254 Palestinians, including 66 children, 39 women, and 17 elderly people, in addition to wounding about 1,948 others with various injuries, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Operation Breaking Dawn (2022) - This was a war launched by the Israeli Defense Forces on the eve of 5 August 2022, when - according to the statements of its leaders - it targeted sites of the Islamic Jihad movement in the Gaza Strip, especially its military arm, Saraya Al-Quds. The attack caused the death of 48 Palestinians, including 16 children and 4 women, and injured 360 others, according to a statement by the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
The international community did not appear to be disturbed by the unlivable conditions in the Gaza Strip, or the fact that an entire generation grew up isolated from the world, with the exception of the advanced technological weapons raining down on them. Rather, what disturbed them was that this besieged people shouted to the entire world that they wanted their freedom, forgetting that these circumstances are the magic recipe for creating an environment that embraces hatred, resentment, anger, and the desire for liberation.
Since 7 October, Israel has been waging an brutal campaign against Gaza, where the number of victims has reached, as of the moment of writing these lines: 9,061, including 3,760 children and 2,326 women, while the number of injured has risen to 32,000, while the Ministry of Health in Gaza has received 2,060 reports of persons missing under the rubble, including 1,150 children.
Consequently, Israel is waging a “terrorist campaign” against the Palestinian people, in full view of the world, and the killing rates of Palestinian children have reached such that a child is killed every 15 minutes as a result of attacks launched by Israel, according to statistics from the International Movement for Defense for Children. Children are the overwhelming majority of the dead and wounded, which refutes Israel’s claims that it targets Hamas militants and not civilians.
Those children, women, wounded men, and even those who were not injured face serious “health, psychological, and social” effects that affect their future even in the event of a ceasefire, and there is not a single safe place in Gaza. Not even the facilities of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians in the Near East, “UNRWA.” Israel also targets the southern Gaza Strip, despite its appeal to the people to migrate there in a process of ethnic cleansing.
Hundreds of buildings and homes were completely destroyed, and thousands of housing units were damaged in the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip. The intense bombing operations led to massive destruction of infrastructure and roads. The features of the North Gaza Governorate have changed due to unparalleled massacres. Rescue teams are unable to reach hundreds of people missing under the rubble, and the cut off of communications has set back the work of civil defense and ambulances.
The deterioration of medical services
The heaviest Israeli bombing focused on the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza and the “Indonesian” Hospital, after the Baptist Hospital massacre, where Israel committed one of the most horrific massacres in the Gaza Strip. Its aircraft targeted the (Baptist) Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on 17 October, 2023, which led to the martyrdom of more than 500 Palestinians, most of them women and children, who had taken to the hospital as a safe refuge from Israeli raids.
The air strike resulted in the killing and wounding of hundreds of Palestinians, and the bodies of some martyrs were transformed into scattered body parts and others were charred. In addition, a huge fire broke out in parts of the hospital, destroying a large part of it.
This was not the first raid on Al-Ahli Hospital during the Israeli aggression on Gaza. Occupation aircraft targeted it on 15 October, 2023, which led to the injury of 4 of its medical personnel, and some of its departments were destroyed.
Here we will not go into the details of the Israeli story that claimed that the missiles that targeted the hospital were launched from the Gaza Strip itself. As I mentioned previously, these lies and propaganda fall within the framework of the war of the narrative, the Palestinian narrative and the Israeli narrative, where Israel deliberately promotes a narrative that does not conform to the truth in order to justify its barbarism and barbarism against civilians in the Gaza Strip.
As Syrians, we know very well this method. Bashar al-Assad followed it during his war on the Syrian people, and behind him was Russia and the mouthpieces that promoted Russian propaganda. These media machines, in every new massacre, were trying to falsify and hide the facts or accuse the opposition factions of committing the massacres, and now the same. The scenario is repeated in Gaza.
Workers in Gaza hospitals warned that they are about to close various departments due to the running out of fuel needed to operate electricity and the lack of water, in the sector that is facing the scourges of war.
The spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, said that 12 hospitals and 32 primary care centers were out of service, either because they were targeted by Israeli raids or because fuel was not available. The World Health Organization (WHO) had warned that the remaining fuel was limited to being used in hospitals for life-saving operations only.
Dr Richard Peeperkorn, from the WHO, told the BBC: “The hospitals we work with are all running generators at minimum levels, only for life-saving operations.” The United Nations said on Tuesday evening that a third of hospitals and about two-thirds of primary health care clinics in Gaza had already closed due to damage caused by the war and fuel shortages. It added a warning that fuel would run out completely unless new supplies were obtained immediately.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) also warned that it would be forced to stop its relief operations on Wednesday, 25 October, in the Gaza Strip, due to a lack of fuel supplies.
Israel cut off fuel, electricity and water to Gaza following the Hamas attack on 7 October, and hospitals were relying on backup generators powered by fuel, and some of them designated care only for critical cases.
Regional implications
Amid the ongoing war between the Palestinian factions and the Israeli occupation, the so-called “Axis of Resistance” in the Middle East is facing moments that may be the most challenging in its history, which may spell the end of this bloc that Iran built across 40 years, which it spread to several Arab capitals.
The “Axis of Resistance” refers to an informal, anti-Western, anti-Israel military-political alliance between Iran, the Syrian regime, Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Yemeni Houthi movement, as well as Iraqi Shiite militias, which are part of the Popular Mobilization Forces, officially linked to the government.
Although the coalition's ideologies differ, such as secular Baathists and Shiite Islamists, they are united by their goal of opposing the activities of pro-Western and pro-Israel parties.
Iran, Russia and China are also part of the alliance, due to their anti-Western political stance and their positive relations with Tehran and Damascus.
Although the "Al-Aqsa Flood" operation launched by the Palestinian factions in Gaza represented a major defeat to the occupation, which directed its anger at Palestinian civilians by using a scorched earth policy against them, the "axis of resistance" still only issues threats.
Iran has built a model called “The Axis of Resistance”, and over the past 40 years it has said that it wants to stand by the Palestinian people and liberate Jerusalem, and through this theory it has gained enormous influence in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Today the war is taking place, and Iran has two choices: either implement what it has been saying for 40 years, and if it did, then what it has been saying is true, however, if Tehran does not do that, it cannot say that it is defending Jerusalem and Palestine, because its inaction is a neglect of the peoples of the region.
The fact that these people are not participating in the battle now means the end of all the theory that Iran has built for itself, because the war today is on the ground. Either it applies its theory, or after that each of these parties finds its own alliances in the region, because there is no longer a narrative called the Axis of Resistance.
However, Iran and the so-called “Axis of Resistance” respond to all these criticisms by issuing threats and talking about not allowing the Israeli occupation to be alone in Gaza, and that if the Israeli crimes there do not stop immediately, new fronts will be opened against the Zionist entity.
The Axis of Resistance, and Iran in particular, know that what is happening today between the Palestinian resistance and the Israeli occupation is a real battle and not a show or sectarian revenge campaigns until they unleash all their hatred, meaning that whoever enters this war is the one who actually wants to support the Palestinians, and not just shout slogans.
It has become clear that the Axis does not want to enter into a war where they do not know if they can win. This is reflected in the countries where they have control, especially since the Syrian Golan is still occupied since the 1967 war, and they have not done anything about it, and Iran has not intervened. After the assassination of Iran’s most prominent military leader in the modern era, Iranian Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani, it did next to nothing when the Mossad killed its most prominent nuclear reactor scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, on Iranian soil.
Why does Iran enter a war for the sake of Arabs in Gaza, why does it involve itself in an armed confrontation with Israel? Iran has an expansionist project in the region through which it maintains its system of government, and is not prepared to enter into any war with the West that would end the rule of the mullahs.
Since the 1980s, and for more than four decades, both Iran and the Syrian regime have considered themselves representatives of the resistance in the Middle East region, and they claimed that one of their priorities was to support the steadfastness of the Palestinian people against the Israeli entity, until the liberation of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
But this Axis committed several travesties, starting with Iraq after the American occupation of the country in 2003, and passing through the Syrian revolution in 2011, until the stage of ISIS’s invasion of these two countries in 2014, by displacing millions of residents and killing hundreds of thousands on a sectarian basis, targeting those opposed to the Syrian regime.
The Axis of Resistance, which has indulged in the killing of civilians in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and practices all kinds of intimidation and bullying in Lebanon, cannot be allies and humanitarians with regard to the Palestinian issue. It has become clear today that they have begun to use the name of the Palestinian issue for their political interests and to ensure their military survival in the region.
Returning to 7 October, in this war, and as usual, Israel presented itself as a victim of a treacherous and unjustified aggression by the “terrorist” organization Hamas, and that this is an existential war for Israel and that requires the eradication of Hamas, even if that requires the destruction of the Gaza Strip with more than 2 million of its residents, the Palestinians because, in the eyes of Israel, they embrace Hamas “terrorists.”
Israel has deliberately portrayed Hamas fighters as predatory creatures commiting brutality against Jews that is unprecedented in the modern era. Netanyahu called them “wild animals,” and “barbarians worse than ISIS,” who burned people alive, raped women, and decapitated captives. This was a prelude to his “every member of Hamas is a dead man,” statement.
In his phone conversation with Biden, which was circulated in the media, the Israeli Prime Minister described the events that occurred following the Hamas attack on the settlements surrounding Gaza as “the most dangerous thing the Jewish people have faced since the Holocaust massacres, and that it is a major catastrophe that befell the people of Israel.”
After the Israeli army regained relative control over the settlements that Al-Qassam forces stormed and controlled for a few days, Israel mobilized the media, arranged meetings and testimonies for Israeli soldiers and survivors, and photographed the effects of destruction and fighting.
The result of this was that evidence of war crimes committed against Israeli civilians mixed with unsubstantiated reports about the slaughter of hundreds of children amid the indiscriminate killing of civilians, including women, the elderly, and children.
But what was more dangerous than this was the adoption of the Israeli narrative by senior Western officials, led by US President Biden, in his speech before his meeting with American Jewish leaders at the White House on Wednesday, 10 October 2023, followed by a number of American and Western officials. The bottom line is that the majority of Western countries, including the ruling and opposition parties, institutions, organizations and the media, have acknowledged what Israel is putting forward, that Hamas is a terrorist organization just like ISIS, as Netanyahu said, and therefore sympathy with it is criminalized and must be eradicated.
They also officially or implicitly agree with the Israeli proposal, which is that eradicating Hamas requires the destruction of the incubating environment, i.e. the Gaza Strip. Hence the systematic air, sea, and artillery bombardment to destroy the Gaza Strip and cut off all means of life from it. They will either kill Palestinian citizens or force them to move outside the Strip to a proposed displacement in the Egyptian Sinai.
This, of course, violates all international and humanitarian laws and amounts to a war of genocide and ethnic cleansing, a war crime and a crime against humanity, as confirmed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, but the world, with the exception of some protests, allows Israel to do so.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli President Herzog conversed with Western leaders as allies, led by Biden (America), Sunak (Britain), Macron (France), Schulz (Germany), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), Trudeau (Canada), and Modi (India), while his Defense Minister Gallant spoke. With his counterparts, the Western defense ministers, including the American Lloyd West, as well as his Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, with his counterparts, the foreign ministers of friendly countries. Israel has called on its allies to support it without reservation in all the steps it takes against the Gaza Strip and the Palestinians in general, and to consider Hamas a terrorist organization that must be uprooted. Western leaders have publicly expressed their support for Israel in everything it takes as a matter of self-defense to protect its citizens.
America is always at the forefront, as the American President affirmed American support for Israel without reservation and ordered his massive formation, led by the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford, to head towards Israel. He also expressed his readiness to send another aircraft carrier group if necessary. The US President also ordered that Israel be provided with the weapons and ammunition it needs and requests from US army stores, and promised to provide $8 billion in immediate aid to Israel.
He also warned any other parties (Iran and Hezbollah) against interfering against Israel in its war on Gaza, and implicitly supported the Israeli forces’ invasion of the Gaza Strip. He also sent his Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, on a visit to Israel to confirm not only support but also American participation if necessary. In his joint press conference with Netanyahu, Blinken endorsed everything Netanyahu proposed without reservation.
As soon as Blinken left Israel on a regional Arab tour for Washington’s friends, US Secretary of Defense General Austin arrived, who met with Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Galant and affirmed American support for Israel and the provision of everything it needs militarily. He pointed to the American fleet on the shores of Israel, warning of dire consequences for anyone who targets Israel.
NATO, led by America, held an emergency meeting during 11-12 October, 2023, at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, and was attended by US Secretary of Defense, General Austin, and NATO defense ministers. The Israeli Defense Minister presented via video a presentation of the Israeli vision and the course of the Israeli war and the conflict in the region.
NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg announced the alliance’s support for Israel in its war and warned against the entry of any parties hostile to Israel (Iran and Hezbollah) into the conflict. He agreed to develop the alliance’s mechanisms for operations, coordination, and naval and air control in the eastern Mediterranean. This means that the alliance is prepared not only to support Israel, but also to participate in its war if the war extends beyond Gaza to the surrounding region.
For your information, Turkey is an essential member of NATO and has already sent aid to Israel.
Following in American footsteps, Britain sent naval vessels to rendezvous with the American naval force, which will transform into a NATO force partnering with the Israeli forces if the Gaza war expands into a regional war.
British Prime Minister Sunak also gave “unequivocal” support to the State of Israel, which he called “the only democracy in the Middle East.” He described Hamas and the Palestinian resistance as terrorism and affirmed Britain’s absolute support for Israel in its war against what he calls Hamas terrorism. He also sent his Foreign Minister, James Cleverly, on a solidarity visit to Israel and inspected the Israeli colonies surrounding Gaza, stressing Britain’s biased position towards Israel, which is responsible for the Nakba of Palestine, which had been under its mandate since 1923, by supporting settlement and then the Zionist war, uprooting the Palestinians and establishing Israel on the ruins of Palestine in 1948.
As for the European Union, it sent a high-level delegation to Israel, which included Ursula van der, President of the Commission, and Charles Michel, President of the Council of the European Union. They were received by Netanyahu in occupied Jerusalem and Herzog in Tel Aviv, where they were met with a missile strike that forced them to go to a shelter. The Union delegation affirmed the European Union's strong support for Israel.
Thus, Western countries are racing to conform to the Israeli position that it is a victim, that the Jews are in danger, and that Hamas, the resistance, and those who support them are terrorists, completely ignoring the Palestinian tragedy and the rights of the Palestinian people according to 75 years of international legitimacy. They also strongly support Israel in its plan to uproot the residents of the Gaza Strip and displace them to the Egyptian Sinai Desert, as is evident from its announcement that the residents of the northern Gaza Strip must move south in preparation for the invasion of the Gaza Strip. Then the invasion will continue southward to push the residents of Gaza into the Sinai Desert in a second Palestinian Nakba.
But this is not limited to the position of Western governments and ruling parties, but also includes the opposition. In the United States, the Republican Party stands with President Biden, his administration, and his Democratic Party in supporting Israel. In Britain, the British Labor Party, led by Keir Starmer, is outperforming the Conservative Party, led by Sunak, and in France, the National Front, led by Le Pen, joins President Macron and his party, the Renaissance Party. This is the case in all Western countries, where voices critical of Israel are suppressed within institutions, parties, and the public sphere. There are exceptions from public, parliamentary, political, academic, media and other figures who face this overwhelming flood with courage and pay a heavy price for it.
This decline also includes governments, councils, local government, municipalities, and others. Its expressions include material and moral support for Israel and raising the Israeli flag on official and unofficial buildings and others. It is noted that public meetings are frequent, in which Zionist figures present the Israeli vision and supportive local leaders, and pro-Israel demonstrations take place, Israeli flags are raised, and are covered in the media on a large scale.
On the other hand, in some Western countries–such as France, Germany, and Britain–any activity in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their plight and those protesting against the Israeli war against them is besieged, demonstrations are suppressed, the demonstrators are arrested, and their property is confiscated.
In France, for example, praising Hamas by any means has become a crime punishable by imprisonment. We have also seen in France the suppression of demonstrations in support of Palestine and denouncing Israel, and including Palestinian flags and slogans, and this is happening in other Western countries.
If we examine the Western media, including its virtual media, it expresses a blatant bias towards Israel and a shameful bias against the Palestinians that is unprecedented. With some exceptions, it completely adopts the Israeli narrative. The greater coverage of what is happening in the colonies surrounding Gaza and Israel in general, and the interviews with officials and Israeli figures, especially those who are considered victims of so-called Palestinian terrorism and supporters of the Israeli position at various levels and locations, all portray Israel as a victim of Palestinian terrorism and a threat to the Jews of the world.
Sometimes the destructive Israeli raids on Gaza and the attacks by Israeli forces and settlers on the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem and their killing are presented, and interviews are conducted with prominent Palestinian figures such as Mustafa Barghouti (the Civil Initiative) and Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to Britain, but that is the exception. The Western media does not hesitate to circulate false narratives such as Al-Qassam fighters slaughtered 50 Israeli children during the attack on the Belt Settlements, despite Israel’s failure to prove this with facts.
The infection has spread to the academic field and Western research centers. There is also an objective bias towards Israel at the expense of Palestine, and this includes Arab studies centers in the West. Academic and research figures have turned into parrots repeating Israeli and pro-Israel narratives, theses, and narrations in a coup against its history, falsification of history, and distortion of facts.
No one disagrees about the bleakness of the situation in the Gaza Strip: a brutal, crushing war waged by the Zionists against a people who have been suffering under the weight of siege for 17 years, an ongoing aggression day and night in full view of the world, and no one is doing anything.
The killing of children, women, and the elderly, and terrorism documented in audio and video, in horrific scenes that question our human conscience and afflict humanity with deaths. A disastrous humanitarian situation that the usurping entity insists on perpetuating and exacerbating day after day, with explicit Western support and unprecedented protection, ignoring all international conventions and humanitarian values, which our ears have long been silent while they sing about them in their official speeches.
