If HAMAS had wanted Israel to back off, it would have offered to release all its hostages

    Widely respected American war correspondent Chris Hedges and a whole lot of people seem to ignore, if HAMAS had wanted Israel to back off, HAMAS would have offered to release all of its hostages.

The Chris Hedges Report

Israel Reopens the Gaza Slaughterhouse

Phase One of Israel’s genocidal campaign on Gaza has ended. Phase Two has begun. It will result in even higher levels of death and destruction. 

CHRIS HEDGES

DEC 1, 2023

Slaughterhouse - by Mr. Fish

The skies over Gaza are filled — after a seven-day truce — with projectiles of death. Warplanes. Attack helicopters. Drones. Artillery shells. Tank shells. Mortars. Bombs. Missiles. Gaza is a cacophony of explosions and forlorn screams and cries for help beneath collapsed buildings. Fear, once again, is coiling itself around every heart in the Gazan concentration camp. 

By Friday evening, 184 Palestinians — including three journalists and two doctors — had been killed by Israeli air strikes in the north, south and central Gaza, and at least 589 injured, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Most of them are women and children. Israel will not be deterred. It plans to finish the job, to obliterate what is left in the north of Gaza and decimate what remains in the south, to render Gaza uninhabitable, to see its 2.3 million people driven out in a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing via starvation, terror, slaughter and infectious diseases. 

The aid convoys, which brought in token amounts of food and medicine — the first batch was shrouds and coronavirus tests according to the director of al-Najjar hospital — have been halted. No one, least of all President Joe Biden, plans to intervene to stop the genocide. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel this week, and while calling for Israel to protect civilians, refused to set conditions that would disrupt the $3.8 billion Israel receives in annual military assistance or the $14.3 billion supplemental aid package. The world will watch passively, muttering useless bromides about more surgical strikes, while Israel spins its roulette wheel of death. By the time Israel is done, the 1948 Nakba, where Palestinians were massacred in dozens of villages and 750,000 were ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias, will look like a quaint relic of a more civilized era. 

Nothing is off limits. Hospitals. Mosques. Churches. Homes. Apartment blocks. Refugee camps. Schools. Universities. Media offices. Banks. Sewer systems. Telecommunications infrastructure. Water treatment plants. Libraries. Wheat mills. Bakeries. Markets. Entire neighborhoods. Israel’s intent is to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure and daily kill or wound hundreds of Palestinians. Gaza is to become a wasteland, a dead zone that will be incapable of sustaining life. 

Israel began to bomb Khan Younis on Friday after dropping leaflets warning civilians to evacuate further south to Rafah, located on the border crossing with Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians had sought refuge in Khan Younis. Once Palestinians are pushed to Rafah, there is only one place left to flee — Egypt. The Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, in a leaked report, calls for the forcible transfer of Gaza’s population to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. A detailed plan to intentionally displacethe Palestinians in Gaza and push them into Egypt has been embedded in Israeli doctrine for five decades. Already, 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza have been driven from their homes. Once Palestinians cross the border into Egypt — which the Egyptian government and Arab leaders are seeking to prevent despite pressure from the U.S. — Palestinians will never return. 

This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against Palestinians.

Israeli strikes are generated at a dizzying rate, many of them from a system called “Habsora” — The Gospel — which is built on artificial intelligence that selects 100 targets a day. The AI-system is described by seven current and former Israeli intelligence officials in an article by Yuval Abraham on the Israeli sites +972 Magazine and Local Call, as facilitating a “mass assassination factory.” Israel, once it locates what it assumes to be a Hamas operative from a cell phone, for example, bombs and shells a wide area around the target, killing and wounding tens, and at times hundreds of Palestinians, the article states.

“According to intelligence sources,” the story reads, “Habsora generates, among other things, automatic recommendations for attacking private residences where people suspected of being Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives live. Israel then carries out large-scale assassination operations through the heavy shelling of these residential homes.”

Some 15,000 Palestinians, including 6,000 children and 4,000 women, have been killedsince Oct. 7. Some 30,000 have been wounded. Over six thousand are missing, many buried under the rubble. More than 300 families have lost 10 or more members of their families. More than 250 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, and more than 3,000 injured, although the area is not controlled by Hamas. The Israeli military claims to have killed between 1,000 and 3,000 of some 30,000 Hamas fighters, a relatively small number given the scale of the assault. Most resistance fighters shelter in their vast tunnel system. 

Israel’s playbook is the “Dahiya Doctrine.” The doctrine was formulated by former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who is a member of the war cabinet, following the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Dahiya is a southern Beirut suburb and a Hezbollah stronghold. It was pounded by Israeli jets after two Israeli soldiers were taken prisoner. The doctrine posits that Israel should employ massive, disproportionate force, destroying infrastructure and civilian residences, to ensure deterrence.

Daniel Hagari, spokesman of the IDF, conceded at the start of Israel’s most recent attack on Gaza that the “emphasis” would be “on damage and not on accuracy.”

Israel has abandoned its tactic of “roof knocking” where a rocket without a warhead would land on a roof to warn those inside to evacuate. Israel has also ended its phone calls warning of an impending attack. Now dozens of families in an apartment block or a neighborhood are killed without notice. 

The images of mass destruction feed the thirst for revenge within Israel following the humiliating incursion by Hamas fighters on Oct. 7 and the killing of 1,200 Israelis, including 395 soldiers and 59 police officers. There is a sadistic pleasure voiced by many Israelis over the genocide and a groundswell of calls for the murder or expulsion of Palestinians, including those in the occupied West Bank and those with Israeli citizenship. 

The savagery of the air strikes and indiscriminate attacks, the cutting off of food, water and medicine, the genocidal rhetoric of the Israeli government, make this a war whose sole objective is revenge. This will not be good for Israel or the Palestinians. It will fuel a conflagration throughout the Middle East. 

Israel’s attack is the last desperate measure of a settler colonial project that foolishly thinks, as many settler colonial projects have in the past, that it can crush the resistance of an indigenous population with genocide. But even Israel will not get away with killing on this scale. A generation of Palestinians, many of whom have seen most, if not all, of their families killed and their homes and neighborhoods destroyed, will carry within them a lifelong thirst for justice and retribution. 

This war is not over. It has not even begun.  

    

Feral Finster

"Nothing is off limits. Hospitals. Mosques. Churches. Homes. Apartment blocks. Refugee camps. Schools. Universities. Media offices. Banks. Sewer systems. Telecommunications infrastructure. Water treatment plants. Libraries. Wheat mills. Bakeries. Markets. Entire neighborhoods. Israel’s intent is to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure and daily kill or wound hundreds of Palestinians. Gaza is to become a wasteland, a dead zone that will be incapable of sustaining life."

All of this is entirely intentional, as the recent article in the Israeli publication +972 confirms. 

The question remains - what is anyone going to do about it?

staircase whit

Do about it? The "elites" will benefit financially, and by the time they are up for election, most of the normie nod-alongs will have shrugged it off.

Because most people are watching this like it's a tv show for their entertainment, opportunities to pontificate about the propaganda they drink down like the alcohol that helps them deal with their miserable, worthless lives. I am there, you are there, among these fuckwits - family and "friends" alike. I had hope that word would spread, that eyes would open. Nope.They will wait for the next episode. They will do nothing.

Sloan Bashinsky

Can anyone do anything about it, except the people running Israel and the people running HAMAS? The UN is going to invade GAZA and Israel? What if HAMAS had released all the hostages yesterday? We’ll never know. But what looks crystal clear to me is, this is the result HAMAS wanted when it launched the October 7 attack.

Penelope Pnortney

Which makes Palestinians, including children who don't even know what Hamas is, acceptable collateral damage? There is no justification for what we're witnessing, none.

Sloan Bashinsky

I completely agree with you - there is no justification; yet, this is what HAMAS hoped would happen, to destroy Israel’s reputation. HAMAS views the dead and wounded Gazans as martyrs for HAMAS’ cause. When HAMAS was founded, its stated intent was to destroy Israel. It’s a religious war, and I don’t see any solution for as long as Israel exists in Palestine. The American Christian right and even the left back Israel’s right to exist. And, that’s Christendom’s Holy Land, where Jesus was born and crucified at the behest of Jewish leaders. They want Israel to protect their Holy Land, and they really believe God promised that land to Israel, because their Bible says so.

Feral Finster

Israel is the one dropping the bombs, not your preferred culture war enemies, reprehensible as their support is.

Sloan Bashinsky

I don’t like either side, but this is what HAMAS hoped would happen, and so I blast them, too, and I blast people who don’t blast them, too :-)

Selina Sweet

So, Mr. Bashinsky, had a block of Jewish prisoners in Buckenvald concentration camp managed to overcome their captors, escaped and mowed down every German on sight, you'd view them as you view Hamas?

Sloan Bashinsky

Not in the least, i would view them as saints. But that’s not what this is about. HAMAS’ was founded to destroy Israel. Israel knows that and believes it. HAMAS got the result it wanted when it attacked Israel on October 7, which was my birthday. I simply cannot imagine why Hedges and Israel bashers cannot see that, and why they aren’t bashing HAMAS, too.

Selina Sweet

You may want to check out Caitlin Johnstone's piece today (www.caitlinjohnst.one) entitled "The Goal Is Ethnic Cleansing, Not Defeating Hamas."

Sloan Bashinsky

I started reading Caitlan’s newsletter after she subscribed to mine about 2 weeks ago and invited me to subscribe to hers. She’s just as reluctant to lay any blame on HAMAS as Hedges and lots of other people at her and Hedges’ platforms.

Feral Finster

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Sloan Bashinsky

The facts are in plain view :-) Of course Israel is trying to put pressure on HAMAS. Unfortunately, Israel is doing what HAMAS hoped Israel would do. You clearly do not understand religious fanatics. 

Feral Finster

You present no facts.

A damning new report from +972 Magazine published on Thursday exposes how Israel has been deliberately striking civilian targets in Gaza as a matter of policy because they believe it will “lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas.” It makes it clear that the IDF is very much aware of where the civilians are, and that when they kill children it’s because they calculated that it would be strategically worthwhile to do so.

Sloan Bashinsky

The facts in plain view are what HAMAS did and how Israel responded, and still is responding. If HAMAS had wanted to stop Israel, it would have offered to release all its hostages. 

 

Penelope Pnortney

And Israel was ready and willing to turn the Palestinians into martyrs, great teamwork if what you said is true.

Sloan Bashinsky
Do you think any of this would be happening, if HAMAS had not done what it did on October 7? Do you seriously think HAMAS did not know how Israel would respond? The October 7 attack was bait, plain and simple. Israel took the bait. If I were a Gaza citizen, still living, I would be really pissed off at HAMAS and Israel. 

 

Penelope Pnortney

Numerous Israeli officials have been clearly stating their intentions toward Palestine and Palestinians since long before the Hamas provocation. Acting like Israel's current acts of brutality would not be occurring had the Oct. 7th attack not happened is unbelievably dishonest, the most you can claim is that it might not be occurring *right now*. I wouldn't feel warm fuzzies toward Hamas if I were Gazan but I would hate with the heat of ten thousand suns the people dropping bombs on me, destroying my home and killing my friends and relatives.

Sloan Bashinsky

That’s what I’m saying. The Oct 7 attack is the reason for what is occurring right now, and HAMMAs did not offer to release all its hostages in exchange for Israel not attacking Gaza further.  

 

dorothy slater

One could also say that this is precisely what Netenyahu wanted. It is now known that the Israelis knew a year before the attack that Hamas was plaanning something and warned Netenyahu and yet what did he do? He removed tha security forces . One captured Hamas "terrorist" said that they were anticipating being shot death the minute they crossed into Israel but the entire place was empty. Now one COULD say - and some have - that the attack gave Netenyahu the freedom to do what he has always wanted to do- get rid of the Palestinians once and for all - and so 1200 Israelis died, collateral damage and all of that. If Hamas is a terrorist group - who exactly are Netenyahu and his Likud supporters?

Sloan Bashinsky

Terrorists. Both sides you named.
If I had been America’s president, I would have told Israel privately that the October 7 attack was Israel’s version of 9/11, which Israel’s government had done its part to cause, like America had done its part to cause 9/11, and If Israel attacks Gaza, then, as far as I have any say, Israel is on its own, my administration has nothing to do with it. I then would hold a nationally televised press conference and tell America and the world what I had told Israel privately. I then would expect me and my family members to receive oceans of death threats from the American right wing, and a smaller number of death threats from the American left.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com