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Israel’s Policy in Gaza Is the Opposite of the ‘Deliberate Starvation’ Lie
Israeli military vehicles move near the Israel-Gaza border, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in southern Israel, Dec. 31, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Violeta Santos Moura
It has been more than 100 days since thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and launched an unprovoked genocidal pogrom on Israeli civilians — brutally raping, torturing, and murdering more than 1,200 men, women, and children in the most cruel depraved barbaric ways, as well as kidnapping more than 240 people.
It was the darkest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel, as is its right and its duty, responded to the attack and took the fight to the Hamas terrorists, giving meaning to the words “Never Again.”
But as soon as Israel fought back against those who wanted a genocide of the Jews, the world began to predictably demand Israel show restraint — even as Hamas vowed to carry out more October 7 style massacres and even as they continue to fire rockets into Israel.
Within weeks, many people completely forgot about October 7, as if it somehow never happened, and began focusing exclusively on the plight of Gazan civilians, brushing aside the thousands of dead and injured and kidnapped Israelis as well as the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who remain refugees in their own country after they were forced to leave their homes due to the dangers of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks.
Israel, despite being the victim of the heinous attack, was somehow accused of being responsible for all the misery that had now befallen Gaza. There was no mention of the fact that the vast majority of civilians in Gaza had always supported Hamas’ rule, which had always included terror attacks against Israelis and promises to murder Jews.
In a series of malicious lies, Israel was accused of deliberately targeting civilians, starving the population, denying them water and electricity, and destroying their homes.
South Africa, despite having one of the highest murder rates in the world and an increasing inability to even reliably supply electricity to its own population, still found the time and resources to effectively act as Hamas’ lawyers, dragging Israel before the International Court of Justice to answer patently absurd charges of “genocide” in Gaza.
South Africa and others who make such factually nonsensical claims insist that Israel is deliberately starving the people of Gaza by denying them the “means of life.” They usually cite, as evidence, a phrase uttered by Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, in which, describing the plans to pressure Hamas to release the hostages, Gallant said, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
Yet it is self-evident that this has not been Israel’s actual policy — huge amounts of food, water, and fuel have been entering Gaza, with Israel’s active assistance, over the past 100 days of war.
Between October 7 and mid-January, more than 130,000 tons of humanitarian aid carried by 8,621 trucks had entered the Gaza Strip — most of this food, but also many tons of medical supplies and other essentials. On January 14 alone, 237 humanitarian aid trucks entered Gaza — the single largest amount since the beginning of the war.
These included tankers with cooking oil and fuel for the operation of generators for essential infrastructure services, such as hospitals, sewage treatment plants, and water pumps.
While Israel initially cut off the water it supplied to Gaza — which only amounted to 8% of Gaza’s total consumption before the war — it began resuming such water supplies to Gaza on Oct. 15. Israel has also facilitated successful repairs of vital water infrastructure, including fixing water pipes that Hamas itself destroyed.
In addition to this, field hospitals have been set up and are expected to be operational in the coming days.
Israel has also continually implemented daily pauses in its military operations between 10:00 and 14:00 to facilitate and enable movement of humanitarian aid and allow Gazan residents to replenish their supplies of food and water.
It’s important to note that Israel has placed absolutely no upper limit on humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip, only requiring that all aid trucks be inspected. If there are shortages of essentials in Gaza, it is because humanitarian organizations themselves have been unable to keep up with the aid demand or are failing to distribute it effectively.
Despite the narrative being spun by many that Israel is preventing aid from entering Gaza, the real truth is the opposite. Israel, rather than targeting civilians, has done everything it can reasonably be expected to, and more, to try to help the Palestinian population while also fighting a deadly war under indescribably difficult conditions — including Hamas’ all-encompassing efforts to intertwine all of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure with its military machine.
It therefore seems truly astonishing that pressure is constantly placed on Israel to fix Gaza’s humanitarian situation, while no demands are ever made of Hamas, the actual terrorist organization that initiated this war, which continues to steal aid, uses civilians as human shields, and currently holds 136 hostages — many of whom have been murdered.
The uncomfortable reality is that the world has funded Hamas’ terror state, and instead of electricity plants and desalination plants and educational institutions and engineering schools, the money and materials received were used to build over 500 kilometers of underground tunnels and command structures under hospitals, and establish an armory of thousands and thousands of military weapons and rockets that were used for terror attacks.
How could all that aid be so blatantly abused? It’s a question that the world should demand answers to from Hamas, not Israel.
Perhaps the Hamas billionaire leaders sitting in luxury hotels in Qatar might be able to answer it.
Justin Amler is a Policy Analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).
The post Israel’s Policy in Gaza Is the Opposite of the ‘Deliberate Starvation’ Lie first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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New Orleans Attack Puts Spotlight on Islamic State Comeback Bid
A member of the Emergency Response Division holds an Islamic State militants flag in the Old City of Mosul, Iraq July 10, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani/File Photo.
A US Army veteran who flew a black Islamic State flag on a truck that he rammed into New Year’s revelers in New Orleans shows how the extremist group still retains the ability to inspire violence despite suffering years of losses to a US-led military coalition.
At the height of its power from 2014-2017, the Islamic State “caliphate” imposed death and torture on communities in vast swathes of Iraq and Syria and enjoyed franchises across the Middle East.
Its then-leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed in 2019 by US special forces in northwestern Syria, rose from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself “caliph” of all Muslims.
The caliphate collapsed in 2017 in Iraq, where it once had a base just a 30-minute drive from Baghdad, and in Syria in 2019, after a sustained military campaign by a US-led coalition.
Islamic State responded by scattering in autonomous cells, its leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify. The U.N. estimates it at 10,000 in its heartlands.
The US-led coalition, including some 4,000 US troops in Syria and Iraq, has continued hammering the militants with airstrikes and raids that the US military says have seen hundreds of fighters and leaders killed and captured.
Yet Islamic State has managed some major operations while striving to rebuild and it continues to inspire lone wolf attacks such as the one in New Orleans which killed 14 people.
Those assaults include one by gunmen on a Russian music hall in March 2024 that killed at least 143 people, and two explosions targeting an official ceremony in the Iranian city of Kerman in January 2024 that killed nearly 100.
Despite the counterterrorism pressure, ISIS has regrouped, “repaired its media operations, and restarted external plotting,” Acting US Director for the National Counterterrorism Center Brett Holmgren warned in October.
Geopolitical factors have aided Islamic State. Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has caused widespread anger that jihadists use for recruitment. The risks to Syrian Kurds who are holding thousands of Islamic State prisoners could also create an opening for the group.
Islamic State has not claimed responsibility for the New Orleans attack or praised it on its social media sites, although its supporters have, US law enforcement agencies said.
A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been growing concern about Islamic State increasing its recruiting efforts and resurging in Syria.
Those worries were heightened after the fall in December of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the potential for the militant group to fill the vacuum.
‘MOMENTS OF PROMISE’
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that Islamic State will try to use this period of uncertainty to re-establish capabilities in Syria, but said the United States is determined not to let that happen.
“History shows how quickly moments of promise can descend into conflict and violence,” he said.
A U.N. team that monitors Islamic State activities reported to the U.N. Security Council in July a “risk of resurgence” of the group in the Middle East and increased concerns about the ability of its Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), to mount attacks outside the country.
European governments viewed ISIS-K as “the greatest external terrorist threat to Europe,” it said.
“In addition to the executed attacks, the number of plots disrupted or being tracked through the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Levant, Asia, Europe, and potentially as far as North America is striking,” the team said.
Jim Jeffrey, former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, and Special Envoy to the Global Coalition To Defeat Islamic State, said the group has long sought to motivate lone wolf attacks like the one in New Orleans.
Its threat, however, remains efforts by ISIS-K to launch major mass casualty attacks like those seen in Moscow and Iran, and in Europe in 2015 and 2016, he said.
ISIS also has continued to focus on Africa.
This week, it said 12 Islamic State militants using booby-trapped vehicles attacked a military base on Tuesday in Somalia’s northeastern region of Puntland, killing around 22 soldiers and wounding dozens more.
It called the assault “the blow of the year. A complex attack that is first of its kind.”
Security analysts say Islamic State in Somalia has grown in strength because of an influx of foreign fighters and more revenue from extorting local businesses, becoming the group’s “nerve centre” in Africa.
‘PATH TO RADICALIZATION’
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas native and US Army veteran who once served in Afghanistan, acted alone in the New Orleans attack, the FBI said on Thursday.
Jabbar appeared to have made recordings in which he condemned music, drugs and alcohol, restrictions that echo Islamic State’s playbook.
Investigators were looking into Jabbar’s “path to radicalization,” uncertain how he transformed from military veteran, real-estate agent and one-time employee of the major tax and consulting firm Deloitte into someone who was “100 percent inspired by ISIS,” an acronym for Islamic State.
US intelligence and homeland security officials in recent months have warned local law enforcement about the potential for foreign extremist groups, such as ISIS, to target large public gatherings, specifically with vehicle-ramming attacks, according to intelligence bulletins reviewed by Reuters.
US Central Command said in a public statement in June that Islamic State was attempting to “reconstitute following several years of decreased capability.”
CENTCOM said it based its assessment on Islamic State claims of mounting 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria in the first half of 2024, a rate which would put the group “on pace to more than double the number of attacks” claimed the year before.
H.A. Hellyer, an expert in Middle East studies and senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, said it was unlikely Islamic State would gain considerable territory again.
He said ISIS and other non-state actors continue to pose a danger, but more due to their ability to unleash “random acts of violence” than by being a territorial entity.
“Not in Syria or Iraq, but there are other places in Africa that a limited amount of territorial control might be possible for a time,” Hellyer said, “but I don’t see that as likely, not as the precursor to a serious comeback.”
The post New Orleans Attack Puts Spotlight on Islamic State Comeback Bid first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Plans $8 Billion Arms Sale to Israel, US Official Says
US President Joe Biden speaks on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in this White House handout image taken in the Oval Office in Washington, US, April 4, 2024. Photo: The White House/Handout via REUTERS
The administration of President Joe Biden has notified Congress of a proposed $8 billion arms sale to Israel, a US official said on Friday, with Washington maintaining support for its ally.
The deal would need approval from the House of Representatives and Senate committees and includes munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters as well as artillery shells, Axios reported earlier. The package also includes small-diameter bombs and warheads, according to Axios.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Protesters have for months demanded an arms embargo against Israel, but US policy has largely remained unchanged. In August, the United States approved the sale of $20 billion in fighter jets and other military equipment to Israel.
The Biden administration says it is helping its ally defend against Iran-backed terrorist groups like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
The post US Plans $8 Billion Arms Sale to Israel, US Official Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Releases Proof-of-Life Video of Israeli Hostage Liri Albag
Illustrative. An undated picture of (from left) Liri Albag, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa, and Karina Ariev held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, that was made public by their families on July 16, 2024. Photo: Hostages and Missing Families Forum
i24 News – The Palestinian terrorists of Hamas on Saturday released a video showing signs of life from Israeli hostage Liri Albag.
Albag’s family requested media not to share the video or images from it, asking journalists to respect their privacy at this moment.
Albag, 20, is a surveillance soldier stationed at the Nahal Oz base, was abducted on October 7 by Palestinian jihadists.
The post Hamas Releases Proof-of-Life Video of Israeli Hostage Liri Albag first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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