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Garland Nixon
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THE PROBLEM WITH JOHN MEARSHEIMER
Garland Nixon Streamed live 12 hours ago (on 5.21.24) Because of his apparent "reasonableness" in matters concerning Russia, the Ukraine War, and the Middle East, John Mearsheimer seems to many to be a public intellectual deserving of wide respect and credibility, says Garland Nixon, but such a view would be wrong. For Mearsheimer is just another Neocon, albeit a Neocon whose predilect bogeyman is China, the most dangerous of all possible US adversaries. Listen carefully to this talk by Garland analysing how a confrontation with China could easily get out of hand and escalate to all-out nuclear war, and you will see why Mearsheimer may be much more toxic than even John Bolton or Victoria Nuland, both chiefly obsessed with Russia.
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Things to keep in mind...
Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
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CNN Reports Israel’s Centers for Torturing Gazans
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Eric Zuesse
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IDF soldiers in the field.
On May 11th, CNN published a harrowing report based on satellite photos, courageous Israeli whistleblowers, and some surviving Gazans, describing various forms of torture by Israel’s Government, against captured Gazans. Since the report was badly written and edited, it failed to say anything about why they had been selected for torture, but, even if all of them were from the 20 thousand or so members of the strictly Palestinian organization Hamas (though some of these torture-victims were doctors from Indonesia and other Muslim countries and were otherwise not credible to have been members of Hamas), Israel here is committing international-war crimes.
CNN spoke to three Israeli whistleblowers who worked at the Sde Teiman desert camp, which holds Palestinians detained during Israel’s invasion of Gaza. All spoke out at risk of legal repercussions and reprisals from groups supportive of Israel’s hardline policies in Gaza.
We were told they were not allowed to move. They should sit upright. They’re not allowed to talk. Not allowed to peek under their blindfold.
An Israeli whistleblower recounting his experience at Sde Teiman
According to the accounts,the facility some 18 miles from the Gaza frontier is split into two parts: enclosures where around 70 Palestinian detainees from Gazaare placed under extreme physical restraint, and a field hospital where wounded detainees are strapped to their beds, wearing diapersand fed through straws.
“They stripped them down of anything that resembles human beings,” said one whistleblower, who worked as a medic at the facility’s field hospital.
“(The beatings) were not done to gather intelligence. They were done out of revenge,” said another whistleblower. “It was punishment for what they (the Palestinians) did on October 7 and punishment for behavior in the camp.”
Responding to CNN’s request for comment on all the allegations made in this report, the Israeli military, known as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said in a statement: “The IDF ensures proper conduct towards the detainees in custody. Any allegation of misconduct by IDF soldiers is examined and dealt with accordingly. In appropriate cases, MPCID (Military Police Criminal Investigation’s Division) investigations are opened when there is suspicion of misconduct justifying such action.”
That’s one of three such camps.
The Israeli military has acknowledged partially converting three different military facilities into detention camps for Palestinian detainees from Gaza since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, in which Israeli authorities say about 1,200 were killed and over 250 were abducted, and the subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza, killing nearly 35,000 people according to the strip’s health ministry. These facilities are Sde Teiman in the Negev desert, as well as Anatot and Ofer military bases in the occupied West Bank.
The camps are part of the infrastructure of Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law, an amended legislation passed by the Knesset last December that expanded the military’s authority to detain suspected militants.
So, these are “suspected militants.” So too might be called the students and others throughout the world who are publicly demonstrating (and being punished for it) against what Israel is doing to Gazans. Even if these are authentically “suspected militants,” that does not justify or make legal these tortures. George W. Bush and other extremist far-right persons who claimed to be following the law after invading Iraq on the basis only of his outright lies, might think that the actions of Israel are legal or even necessary, but torture never extracts truth form a detainee and always extracts instead whatever the detainee thinks that the torturer wants him or her to say so as to produce fake ‘evidence’ which the torturing regime wants in order to ‘justify’ itself.
The report goes on to say:
CNN interviewed over a dozen former Gazan detainees who appeared to have been released from those camps. They said they could not determine where they were held because they were blindfolded through most of their detention and cut off from the outside world. But the details of their accounts tally with those of the whistleblowers.
“We looked forward to the night so we could sleep. Then we looked forward to the morning in hopes that our situation might change,” said Dr. Mohammed al-Ran, recalling his detainment at a military facility where he said he endured desert temperatures, swinging from the heat of the day to the chill of night. CNN interviewed him outside Gaza last month.
Al-Ran, a Palestinian who holds Bosnian citizenship, headed the surgical unit at northern Gaza’s Indonesian hospital, one of the first to be shut down and raided as Israel carried out its aerial, ground and naval offensive.
He was arrested on December 18, he said, outside Gaza City’s Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, where he had been working for three days after fleeing his hospital in the heavily bombarded north.
He was stripped down to his underwear, blindfolded and his wrists tied, then dumped in the back of a truck where, he said, the near-naked detainees were piled on top of one another as they were shuttled to a detention camp in the middle of the desert.
The details in his account are consistent with those of dozens of others collected by CNN recounting the conditions of arrest in Gaza. His account is also supported by numerous images depicting mass arrests published on social media profiles belonging to Israeli soldiers. Many of those images show captive Gazans, their wrists or ankles tied by cables, in their underwear and blindfolded.
Al-Ran was held in a military detention center for 44 days, he told CNN. “Our days were filled with prayer, tears, and supplication. This eased our agony,” said al-Ran.
“We cried and cried and cried. We cried for ourselves, cried for our nation, cried for our community, cried for our loved ones. We cried about everything that crossed our minds.” …
Al-Ran’s account of the forms of punishment he saw were corroborated by the whistleblowers who spoke with CNN. A prisoner who committed an offense such as speaking to another would be ordered to raise his arms above his head for up to an hour. The prisoner’s hands would sometimes be zip-tied to a fence to ensure that he did not come out of the stress position.
For those who repeatedly breached the prohibition on speaking and moving, the punishment became more severe. Israeli guards would sometimes take a prisoner to an area outside the enclosure and beat him aggressively, according to two whistleblowers and al-Ran. A whistleblower who worked as a guard said he saw a man emerge from a beating with his teeth, and some bones, apparently broken. …
Strapped to beds in a field hospital
Whistleblower accounts portrayed a different kind of horror at the Sde Teiman field hospital.
“What I felt when I was dealing with those patients is an idea of total vulnerability,” said one medic who worked at Sde Teiman.
“If you imagine yourself being unable to move, being unable to see what’s going on, and being completely naked, that leaves you completely exposed,” the source said. “I think that’s something that borders on, if not crosses to, psychological torture.”
Another whistleblower said he was ordered to perform medical procedures on the Palestinian detainees for which he was not qualified.
“I was asked to learn how to do things on the patients, performing minor medical procedures that are totally outside my expertise,” he said, adding that this was frequently done without anesthesia.
“If they complained about pain, they would be given paracetamol,” he said, using another name for acetaminophen.
“Just being there felt like being complicit in abuse.”
The whistleblowers are Israelis who oppose what Israel’s Government is doing. A Reuters news-report on 10 November 2023, just weeks after the start of Israel’s all-out invasion of Gaza started, stated that, “Among Israel’s Jewish majority, 94% feel part of the country,” and that this was a “peak.” So, any such whistleblower would probably be viewed as a traitor by the vast majority of Israelis. On 10 March 2024, the Times of Israel headlined “Poll: 75% of Jewish Israelis back Rafah operation”. This means that very close to 75% of Israeli citizens backed Israel’s invading Raffah. Any such whistleblower would be viewed as a traitor by 75% of Israeli citizens, and any support within Israel that that person would have would need to come only from some of the 25% who dissent, and who have the courage to express publicly that they dissent from what is so popular amongst the other citizens of the country. Perhaps many of those people are already emigrating from Israel. Even if Israel were to ‘win’ in Gaza, the country would be even far more of an international pariah than it has been.
A 2018 study published by the Middle Eastern Policy Council reported (buried deep down in it) that
86
“nothing less than anti-Semitism”) these new poll-findings will become proclaimed to be showing nothing less than soaring anti-Semitism. Yes, there is, now, increasing anti-Semitism among the many people who think in racist categories instead of in individual ones; and, so, they will blame even non-racist Jews; and, so even non-racist Jews will now be suffering anti-Semitism from those individuals who blame even non-racist Jews for the racism of Israel’s government ever since it was founded in 1948. Israel’s founders, Zionists, learned deeply from Hitler and other racist-fascist imperialists, or ‘nazis’, and now they’re copying the Hitlerites virtually 100%, but replacing the victim-category as being Palestinian instead of Jew.
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ADDENDUM This report is being reproduced here to ensure widest possible circulation and as a public service
At a military base that now doubles as a detention center in Israel’s Negev desert, an Israeli working at the facility snapped two photographs of a scene that he says continues to haunt him.
Rows of men in gray tracksuits are seen sitting on paper-thin mattresses, ringfenced by barbed wire. All appear blindfolded, their heads hanging heavy under the glare of floodlights.
A putrid stench filled the air and the room hummed with the men’s murmurs, the Israeli who was at the facility told CNN. Forbidden from speaking to each other, the detainees mumbled to themselves.
“We were told they were not allowed to move. They should sit upright. They’re not allowed to talk. Not allowed to peek under their blindfold.”
Guards were instructed “to scream uskot” – shut up in Arabic – and told to “pick people out that were problematic and punish them,” the source added.
A leaked photograph of the detention facility shows a blindfolded man with his arms above his head. Obtained by CNN
CNN spoke to three Israeli whistleblowers who worked at the Sde Teiman desert camp, which holds Palestinians detained during Israel’s invasion of Gaza. All spoke out at risk of legal repercussions and reprisals from groups supportive of Israel’s hardline policies in Gaza.
We were told they were not allowed to move. They should sit upright. They’re not allowed to talk. Not allowed to peek under their blindfold.
An Israeli whistleblower recounting his experience at Sde Teiman
According to the accounts,the facility some 18 miles from the Gaza frontier is split into two parts: enclosures where around 70 Palestinian detainees from Gazaare placed under extreme physical restraint, and a field hospital where wounded detainees are strapped to their beds, wearing diapersand fed through straws.
“They stripped them down of anything that resembles human beings,” said one whistleblower, who worked as a medic at the facility’s field hospital.
“(The beatings) were not done to gather intelligence. They were done out of revenge,” said another whistleblower. “It was punishment for what they (the Palestinians) did on October 7 and punishment for behavior in the camp.”
Responding to CNN’s request for comment on all the allegations made in this report, the Israeli military, known as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said in a statement: “The IDF ensures proper conduct towards the detainees in custody. Any allegation of misconduct by IDF soldiers is examined and dealt with accordingly. In appropriate cases, MPCID (Military Police Criminal Investigation’s Division) investigations are opened when there is suspicion of misconduct justifying such action.”
“Detainees are handcuffed based on their risk level and health status. Incidents of unlawful handcuffing are not known to the authorities.”
Sde Teiman detention center The military base that now doubles as a detention center in Israel’s Negev desert is located around 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Gaza frontier.
The IDF did not directly deny accounts of people being stripped of their clothing or held in diapers. Instead, the Israeli military said that the detainees are given back their clothing once the IDF has determined that they pose no security risk.
Reports of abuse at Sde Teiman have already surfaced in Israeli and Arab media after an outcry from Israeli and Palestinian rights groups over conditions there. But this rare testimony from Israelis working at the facility sheds further light on Israel’s conduct as it wages war in Gaza, with fresh allegations of mistreatment. It also casts more doubt on the Israeli government’s repeated assertions that it acts in accordance with accepted international practices and law.
CNN has requested permission from the Israeli military to access the Sde Teiman base. Last month, a CNN team covered a small protest outside its main gate staged by Israeli activists demanding the closure of the facility. Israeli security forces questioned the team for around 30 minutes there, demanding to see the footage taken by CNN’s photojournalist. Israel often subjects reporters, even foreign journalists, to military censorship on security issues.
Detained in the desert
The Israeli military has acknowledged partially converting three different military facilities into detention camps for Palestinian detainees from Gaza since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, in which Israeli authorities say about 1,200 were killed and over 250 were abducted, and the subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza, killing nearly 35,000 people according to the strip’s health ministry. These facilities are Sde Teiman in the Negev desert, as well as Anatot and Ofer military bases in the occupied West Bank.
The camps are part of the infrastructure of Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law, an amended legislation passed by the Knesset last December that expanded the military’s authority to detain suspected militants.
Patrick Gallagher/CNN
The law permits the military to detain people for 45 days without an arrest warrant, after which they must be transferred to Israel’s formal prison system (IPS), where over 9,000 Palestinians are being held in conditions that rights groups say have drastically deteriorated since October 7. Two Palestinian prisoners associations said last week that 18 Palestinians – including leading Gaza surgeon Dr. Adnan al-Bursh – had died in Israeli custody over the course of the war.
The military detention camps – where the number of inmates is unknown – serve as a filtration point during the arrest period mandated by the Unlawful Combatants Law. After their detention in the camps, those with suspected Hamas links are transferred to the IPS, while those whose militant ties have been ruled out are released back to Gaza.
CNN interviewed over a dozen former Gazan detainees who appeared to have been released from those camps. They said they could not determine where they were held because they were blindfolded through most of their detention and cut off from the outside world. But the details of their accounts tally with those of the whistleblowers.
Hear from former detainees held inside Sde Teiman
CNN
“We looked forward to the night so we could sleep. Then we looked forward to the morning in hopes that our situation might change,” said Dr. Mohammed al-Ran, recalling his detainment at a military facility where he said he endured desert temperatures, swinging from the heat of the day to the chill of night.CNN interviewed him outside Gaza last month.
Al-Ran, a Palestinian who holds Bosnian citizenship, headed the surgical unit at northern Gaza’s Indonesian hospital, one of the first to be shut down and raided as Israel carried out its aerial, ground and naval offensive.
He was arrested on December 18, he said, outside Gaza City’s Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, where he had been working for three days after fleeing his hospital in the heavily bombarded north.
He was stripped down to his underwear, blindfolded and his wrists tied, then dumped in the back of a truck where, he said, the near-naked detainees were piled on top of one another as they were shuttled to a detention camp in the middle of the desert.
The details in his account are consistent with those of dozens of others collected by CNN recounting the conditions of arrest in Gaza. His account is also supported by numerous images depicting mass arrests published on social media profiles belonging to Israeli soldiers. Many of those images show captive Gazans, their wrists or ankles tied by cables, in their underwear and blindfolded.
Al-Ran was held in a military detention center for 44 days, he told CNN. “Our days were filled with prayer, tears, and supplication. This eased our agony,” said al-Ran.
“We cried and cried and cried. We cried for ourselves, cried for our nation, cried for our community, cried for our loved ones. We cried about everything that crossed our minds.”
Dr. Mohammed Al-Ran headed the surgical unit at Gaza’s Indonesian hospital, one of the first to be raided and shut down by Israel. From Social Media
Al-Ran is pictured on the day of his release from a detention camp, in a visibly worse physical condition. From Social Media
A week into his imprisonment, the detention camp’s authorities ordered him to act as an intermediary between the guards and the prisoners, a role known as Shawish, “supervisor,” in vernacular Arabic.
According to the Israeli whistleblowers, a Shawish is normally a prisoner who has been cleared of suspected links to Hamas after interrogation.
The Israeli military denied holding detainees unnecessarily or using them for translation purposes. “If there is no reason for continued detention, the detainees are released back to Gaza,” they said in a statement.
However, whistleblower and detainee accounts – particularly pertaining to Shawish – cast doubt on the IDF’s depiction of its clearing process. Al-Ran says that he served as Shawish for several weeks after he was cleared of Hamas links. Whistleblowers also said that the absolved Shawish served as intermediaries for some time.
They are typically proficient in Hebrew, according to the eyewitnesses, enabling them to communicate the guards’ orders to the rest of the prisoners in Arabic.
For that, al-Ran said he was given a special privilege: his blindfold was removed. He said this was another kind of hell.
“Part of my torture was being able to see how people were being tortured,” he said. “At first you couldn’t see. You couldn’t see the torture, the vengeance, the oppression.
“When they removed my blindfold, I could see the extent of the humiliation and abasement … I could see the extent to which they saw us not as human beings but as animals.”
A leaked photograph of an enclosure where detainees in gray tracksuits are seen blindfolded and sitting on paper-thin mattresses. CNN was able to geolocate the hangar in the Sde Teiman facility. A portion of this image has been blurred by CNN to protect the identity of the source. Obtained by CNN
Al-Ran’s account of the forms of punishment he saw were corroborated by the whistleblowers who spoke with CNN. A prisoner who committed an offense such as speaking to another would be ordered to raise his arms above his head for up to an hour. The prisoner’s hands would sometimes be zip-tied to a fence to ensure that he did not come out of the stress position.
For those who repeatedly breached the prohibition on speaking and moving, the punishment became more severe. Israeli guards would sometimes take a prisoner to an area outside the enclosure and beat him aggressively, according to two whistleblowers and al-Ran. A whistleblower who worked as a guard said he saw a man emerge from a beating with his teeth, and some bones, apparently broken.
That whistleblower and al-Ran also described a routine search when the guards would unleash large dogs on sleeping detainees, lobbing a sound grenade at the enclosure as troops barged in. Al-Ran called this “the nightly torture.”
“While we were cabled, they unleashed the dogs that would move between us, and trample over us,” said al-Ran. “You’d be lying on your belly, your face pressed against the ground. You can’t move, and they’re moving above you.”
The same whistleblower recounted the search in the same harrowing detail. “It was a special unit of the military police that did the so-called search,” said the source. “But really it was an excuse to hit them. It was a terrifying situation.”
“There was a lot of screaming and dogs barking.”
Strapped to beds in a field hospital
Whistleblower accounts portrayed a different kind of horror at the Sde Teiman field hospital.
“What I felt when I was dealing with those patients is an idea of total vulnerability,” said one medic who worked at Sde Teiman.
“If you imagine yourself being unable to move, being unable to see what’s going on, and being completely naked, that leaves you completely exposed,” the source said. “I think that’s something that borders on, if not crosses to, psychological torture.”
Another whistleblower said he was ordered to perform medical procedures on the Palestinian detainees for which he was not qualified.
“I was asked to learn how to do things on the patients, performing minor medical procedures that are totally outside my expertise,” he said, adding that this was frequently done without anesthesia.
“If they complained about pain, they would be given paracetamol,” he said, using another name for acetaminophen.
“Just being there felt like being complicit in abuse.”
Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center
A CNN investigation has uncovered the horrors of a shadowy detention facility where Palestinian prisoners are blindfolded, handcuffed and forced to wear dirty diapers. Watch Matthew Chance’s full report. #CNN#News
See the model CNN has recreated based on eyewitness accounts showing inside Sde Teiman
00:41 - Source: CNN / The Sde Teiman field hospital, with prisoner patients shackled to their beds.
The same whistleblower also said he witnessed an amputation performed on a man who had sustained injuries caused by the constant zip-tying of his wrists. The account tallied with details of a letter authored by a doctor working at Sde Teiman published by Ha’aretz in April.
“From the first days of the medical facility’s operation until today, I have faced serious ethical dilemmas,” said the letter addressed to Israel’s attorney general, and its health and defense ministries, according to Ha’aretz. “More than that, I am writing (this letter) to warn you that the facilities’ operations do not comply with a single section among those dealing with health in the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law.”
An IDF spokesperson denied the allegations reported by Ha’aretz in a written statement to CNN at the time, saying that medical procedures were conducted with “extreme care” and in accordance with Israeli and international law.
The spokesperson added that the handcuffing of the detainees was done in “accordance with procedures, their health condition and the level of danger posed by them,” and that any allegation of violence would be examined.
Whistleblowers also said that the medical teams were told to refrain from signing medical documents, corroborating previous reporting by rights group Physicians for Human Rights in Israel (PHRI).
The PHRI report released in April warned of “a serious concern that anonymity is employed to prevent the possibility of investigations or complaints regarding breaches of medical ethics and professionalism.”
“You don’t sign anything, and there is no verification of authority,” said the same whistleblower who said he lacked the appropriate training for the treatment he was asked to administer. “It is a paradise for interns because it’s like you do whatever you want.”
CNN also requested comment from the Israeli health ministry on the allegations in this report. The ministry referred CNN back to the IDF.
Concealed from the outside world
Sde Teiman and other military detention camps have been shrouded in secrecy since their inception. Israel has repeatedly refused requests to disclose the number of detainees held at the facilities, or to reveal the whereabouts of Gazan prisoners.
Last Wednesday, the Israeli Supreme Court held a hearing in response to a petition brought forward by Israeli rights group, HaMoked, to reveal the location of a Palestinian X-Ray technician detained from Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza in February. It was the first court session of its kind since October 7.
Israel’s highest court had previously rejected writs of habeas corpus filed on behalf of dozens of Palestinians from Gaza held in unknown locations.
The disappearances “allows for the atrocities that we’ve been hearing about to happen,” said Tal Steiner, an Israeli human rights lawyer and executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel.
“People completely disconnected from the outside world are the most vulnerable to torture and mistreatment,” Steiner said in an interview with CNN.
Since October 7, more than 100 structures, including large tents and hangars, appeared within these areas of the Sde Teiman desert camp. Planet Labs PBC
Satellite images provide further insight into activities at Sde Teiman, revealing that in the months since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, more than 100 new structures, including large tents and hangars, have been built at the desert camp. A comparison of aerial photographs from September 10, 2023 and March 1 this year also showed a significant increase in the number of vehicles at the facility, indicating an uptick in activity. Satellite imagery from two dates in early December showed construction work in progress.
CNN also geolocated the two leaked photographs showing the enclosure holding the group of blindfolded men in gray tracksuits. The pattern of panels seen on the roof matched those of a large hangar visible in satellite imagery. The structure, which resembles an animal pen, is located in the central area of the Sde Teiman compound. It is an older structure seen among new buildings which have appeared since the war began.
CNN reviewed satellite images from two other military detention camps – Ofer and Anatot bases in the occupied West Bank – and did not detect expansion in the grounds since October 7. Several rights groups and legal experts say they believe that Sde Teiman, which is the nearest to Gaza, likely hosts the largest number of detainees of the three military detention camps.
“I was there for 23 days. Twenty-three days that felt like 100 years,” said 27-year-old Ibrahim Yassine on the day of his release from a military detention camp.
He was lying in a crowded room with over a dozen newly freed men – they were still in the grey tracksuit prison uniforms. Some had deep flesh wounds from where the handcuffs had been removed.
“We were handcuffed and blindfolded,” said another man, 43-year-old Sufyan Abu Salah. “Today is the first day I can see.”
Several had a glassy look in their eyes and were seemingly emaciated. One elderly man breathed through an oxygen machine as he lay on a stretcher. Outside the hospital, two freed men from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society embraced their colleagues.
For Dr. Al-Ran, his reunion with his friends was anything but joyful. The experience, he said, rendered him mute for a month as he battled an “emotional deadness.”
“It was very painful. When I was released, people expected me to miss them, to embrace them. But there was a gap,” said al-Ran. “The people who were with me at the detention facility became my family. Those friendships were the only things that belonged to us.”
Just before his release, a fellow prisoner had called out to him, his voice barely rising above a whisper, al-Ran said. He asked the doctor to find his wife and kids in Gaza. “He asked me to tell them that it is better for them to be martyrs,” said al-Ran. “It is better for them to die than to be captured and held here.”
Credits Executive producer: Barbara Arvanitidis Senior investigations writer: Tamara Qiblawi Chief global affairs correspondent: Matthew Chance OSINT reporter: Allegra Goodwin Photojournalist: Alex Platt Reporters: Abeer Salman and Ami Kaufman Gaza journalists: Mohammad Al Sawalhi and Tareq Al Hilou Contributing journalist: Kareem Khadder Visual and graphic editors: Carlotta Dotto, Lou Robinson and Mark Oliver 3D designer: Tom James Photo editor: Sarah Tilotta Video editors: Mark Baron, Julie Zink and Augusta Anthony Motion designers: Patrick Gallagher and Yukari Schrickel Digital editors: Laura Smith-Spark and Eliza Mackintosh Executive editors: Dan Wright and Matt Wells
Lili News 029
In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.
Things to keep in mind...
Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.
Unfortunately, most people take this site for granted. DONATIONS HAVE ALMOST DRIED UP… PLEASE send what you can today! JUST USE THE BUTTON BELOW
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
Truth-Seekers versus Lie-Seekers
Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.
Eric Zuesse
Resize text-+=
The "democratic" content of the plutocratic American republic—practically zero— does not change regardless of the party in charge.
Whereas truth-seekers apply the epistemology that’s known as science in order to understand how the world really works, lie-seekers apply the epistemology that’s known as faith in order to ‘find’ that it works in the way that the particular lie-seeker already believes that it works.
To understand is not merely to find but to learn the larger system in which any given finding functions: it’s to know about more than just a gear, but instead about the machine of which it’s a part, and (at the highest level of science) why that machine was designed the way it is. No one can know why it works who doesn’t know how it works.
The evidence that conservatives crave lies is abundant. Conservatives also loved Sarah Palin’s and Chuck Grassley’s lies about“Obama’s death panels”— loved these lies so much, that “politically knowledgeable Palin supporters” actuallyincreased their belief in the death panels, after being provided proofthat it was a lie.
However, liberals are just as much dedicated to their club’s lies. For example, take the war in Ukraine, which was created by Barack Obama, whom America’s liberals think to be a decent man, if not even one of America’s finest recent Presidents:
place a missile there a mere 317 miles or five minutes of missile-flying-time away from The Kremlin and thus too brief for Russia to respond before its central command would already be beheaded by America’s nuclear strike.
found that the higher a person’s education is, the more conservative that person becomes — the more opposed to wealth-redistribution he or she is. The data suggest that because the more-educated people tend to be wealthier, and because most people are psychopaths (their main actual motivation is their own self-interest, not bringing about a better world — not producing a more just world), richer people tend to be Republicans, whereas poorer persons tend to be Democrats.
So: a person’s circumstances tend to determine which club that person belongs to. The Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee both are clubs, and they both pretend to represent their voters, but actually they do not and never have.They represent the mega-donors who fund it.The billionaires who fund the Republican Party put up candidates who pretend to represent the self-interest of their voters, whereas the billionaires who fund the Democratic Party put up candidates who pretend to represent the nation’s interest.
By contrast, a scientist has no club to belong to, because loyalty to any club is alien to science, which is instead ONLY loyalty to truth itself. People whose only loyalty is to truth itself, tend to become whistleblowers, and the people in power haven’t designed their system to reward, but instead to punish, them. This is a scientific, empirically based, finding, but lie-lovers refuse to know it. And that makes it easy for the super-rich to control the public.
Lili News 029
In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.
Things to keep in mind...
Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.
Unfortunately, most people take this site for granted. DONATIONS HAVE ALMOST DRIED UP… PLEASE send what you can today! JUST USE THE BUTTON BELOW
BELOW is the full program, as it appears on Rumble. We reprint it here, too, because YouTube (owned by Google) is totally unreliable; practices a capricious form of censorship (without appeal) that dismisses the First Amendment and shows no consistent respect for free speech, acting instead in accord with the wishes and commands of the globalist ruling elites and their governmental shills in Congress, media and the judiciary.
If you approve of this article, please share it with your friends and kin.
Help us expand our reach. Defeat appalling hypocrisy. Lies cost countless lives.
We must act together to smash the VILE Western disinformation machine.
This is the Lying Machine that protects the greatest evil humanity has ever seen.
YOU know what we are talking about.
Things to keep in mind...
Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.
Unfortunately, most people take this site for granted. DONATIONS HAVE ALMOST DRIED UP… PLEASE send what you can today! JUST USE THE BUTTON BELOW
The greatest irony is that CNN, which supports Israeli censorship, is now criticizing the Chinese government for not suppressing the anger of Chinese citizens over the horrors in Gaza, and vilifying the Chinese as “anti-Semitic” for doing so.
A Summary of the Horror
We would like to remind our readers that every inhabitant in Gaza is hungry, that some 50,000 pregnant women receive neither medical care nor adequate nutrition, that infants are dying in droves, and that 100,000 people have died or been injured by military violence in the Gaza ghetto so far —that is one in twenty—and that many of the injured have no access to medical care.
After the news in which it was falsely claimed that Hamas had beheaded Israeli babies, this followed: “In a desperate bid for international sympathy, the Israeli government has sought to stir outrage over the killing of a 12-year-old girl during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7,” according to this report.
Naftali Bennett, the former Israeli Prime Minister, chimed in to proclaim that “Liel Hetzroni of Kibbutz Beeri was murdered in her home by Hamas monsters… We’re fighting the most just war: to ensure this can never happen again.” That was a shameless lie. She was killed when an Israeli tank fired on her house.
Naftali Bennett
And an Israeli soldier held hostage in Gaza was killed with poison gas, not by Hamas, but by Israel—a fact that led his mother to allude to the gas chambers in Hitler’s Germany.
Brian Mast (R-Fl) wearing IDF uniform in Congress. [Source: dailycaller.com]
We also watch in disbelief as the last vestiges of moral decency are turned upside down: Those of us who oppose genocide are accused of condoning it. Those who commit genocide are exercising their right to self-defense!
In September, before the paramilitary wing of Hamas overran the Israeli border on October 7, 2023 (a sober analysis can be found here), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed a map of the so-called New Middle East at a session of the UN General Assembly. The Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem had all been incorporated into a Greater Israel. Ironically, he insisted that Israel should extend “from the river to the sea.” Palestine had ceased to exist. Palestinians are forced to choose between death by bombing, disease, exposure, starvation or expulsion from their homeland.
Nazism Is in Full Swing Again
Both prominent Israeli politicians and ordinary Israelis use the terminology of the German Reich to refer to the Palestinians as sub-human animals (and therefore acceptable prey to kill). They are forcing the Palestinians who have survived this far to leave, “benevolently” referring to this as “voluntary emigration from Gaza,” which is supported by 83% of Israelis—a term and tactic of ethnic cleansing also used by Nazi Germany.
Greater Israel’s Model: Greater Germany! [Source: Screenshot of Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum] Israel is doing the same in Gaza with German thoroughness. That is why the International Court of Justice (ICJ) recently ruled that “Gaza has become a place of death and despair” (ICJ Ruling, page 13, point 47).
Masha Gessen, a Jewish relative of Holocaust survivors and a Hannah Arendt prize winner, explains that “the politics of memory in Europe obscures what we see in Israel and Gaza today.” And as your media refuse to report on the unprecedented horror of our time, we have decided to show you graphic pictures of helpless citizens severely injured by Israeli bombs, kindly provided by our interviewee, Dr. Khan. However, we will not show you pictures from another source of dead women and children who have been torn to pieces.
Felix Abt: Dr. Khan, you have just returned from Gaza. It is the second time you have worked there. In 2010, you spent a year in the Gaza Strip as Head of Orthopaedics at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis where you taught and trained the local surgeons in the art of Ilizarov surgery and performed many cases of limb deformity, infection, and mal-unions of fractures. You wrote the book Nowhere to Run: A Surgeon’s Tale from the Gaza Strip about your experiences there. Since then, the situation has changed dramatically, and for the worse, as you discovered during your recent visit. What has become of this hospital and your former colleagues there?
Dr. S.A. Khan: I arrived at European Gaza Hospital [EGH] with the Red Cross [ICRC] team and was very surprised and pleased to see surgeons and nurses I had worked with more than a decade ago! The Head of Department of EGH was one of my Residents over a decade ago! So it was a sort of homecoming with many of the other EGH staff. I also met displaced colleagues from Al Shifa working now at EGH.
The problem was getting to and from work was now getting dangerous…so we started operating theaters at 10:30 a.m. and many of the staff would sleep in theaters till the next shift came in.
Some of my former colleagues were trapped with their families at the Al Muwasi camp…which is a strip of beach in the ‘safe zone.’ Many fear if they now return to Nasser Hospital, the IDF will arrest them as many of the Al Shifa medics are still missing, raising questions.
Felix Abt: Israel forced patients and medical staff to leave hospitals, condemning these patients and the new patients to death. Could at least some of these patients be saved, and if so, how?
Dr. S.A. Khan: Any patient can be saved if there are enough resources and specialists available. Forcibly removing patients from hospitals…[I] am sure that goes against Geneva Conventions… You may want to check?
Felix Abt: As a doctor working in developing countries and conflict zones, you’ve probably seen a lot of terrible things. What went through your mind when you saw missing limbs, deep infected wounds, women’s and children’s intestines spilled on the ground, and other horrific scenes, this time on an unprecedented scale in Gaza?
Dr. S.A. Khan: No words can describe it…the Foundation’s media team did not put up any horrific photos or videos on its Instagram…maybe we should?
Felix Abt: On January 5, the United Nations reported that there have been “600 attacks on health care in Gaza and the West Bank” since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip. Dozens of hospitals and other medical facilities have been rendered inoperable since October 7 by apparently direct and systematic attacks on medical personnel and facilities. The disruption of electricity and communication links by Israel was another barbaric act to prevent adequate medical care. In addition, the destruction of infrastructure led to severe hygiene problems due to a lack of water and sanitation facilities. How do you assess the extent of this obviously deliberate vandalism by the occupying forces and what impact will this have on the health and survival of the population?
Dr. S.A. Khan: There are many facets to your question….
Attacks on health care workers…I was just emailed the UN figures for deaths till January 22, 2024, from October 7th:
63 doctors
111 nurses
23 paramedics
29 pharmacists
13 lab staff
337 additional health care workers (orderlies, caregivers, support staff)
Hospitals are supposed to be sanctuaries of healing and safety…This is the first time in 30 years of humanitarian work that I have seen such blatant killing of health care professionals…some with a white flag…others have been kidnapped and we do not know their whereabouts… what about these Israeli Human Shields and POWs who happen to be medics!
Israel attacks six British surgeons in their home with a thousand-pound GPS-guided bomb
On January 18th IDF bombed their residence on the beach! The facts I have just received and on MAP website…the UN did an investigation and the type of explosive used was a 1000-pound GPS-guided lump of metal and destruction…evidence gathered from the fragment analysis…only IDF or UK or USA have that type of bomb. MAP is asking the UK government why they are not doing something to protect their humanitarian workers in Gaza….The IDF have our coordinates! Every time we [ICRC] move, we have to coordinate with the IDF and Hamas.
The health conditions are deteriorating and many people already had upper respiratory tract infections and we, meaning myself and teams from Norway, still have chest problems…The air was sometimes thick with dust…bombs did fall about 500 meters away…I mean big bombs!
In terms of vandalism by IDF: I am attending an international meeting in Amman, Jordan, on February 7th, hosted by the King. “Rebuilding Gaza Healthcare” is the Conference and the MIST Foundation will provide input on orthopaedics and training. You can register for FREE with on line access. The Strip has been stripped…[much] of the infrastructure destroyed, but perhaps a blank canvas to erect beautiful hospitals for the Gazans…That’s what I hope to achieve as one of my aims at the conference.
Another British doctor, Dr. Andy Ferguson, who worked in the European hospital in Gaza over Christmas and New Year, described the situation there as follows: “Complete chaos reigns. There are about 22,000 people currently living in makeshift tents on the ground of the hospital or actually on the floors in hospital corridors themselves. (…) The situation within the emergency department particularly was chaotic. There were hundreds and hundreds of patients in there at any moment. Many of them because the primary healthcare system has broken down, looking for the management of their diabetes, high blood pressure, heart failure, kidney failure, and cancer, and on top of that you get groups of ten, twenty, thirty, newly injured patients, often with a number of dead bodies arriving within that chaos.” [Source: instagram.com]
Felix Abt: Some doctors in Gaza explained that they can’t even use a cold compress because of the lack of water, others explained that they clean wounds with vinegar and detergent and operate on people without anesthesia and even without painkillers. Let’s take a concrete example: How do you treat a child whose body is covered in shrapnel—with severely damaged limbs and perhaps dozens of open wounds from “head to toe”—given the extremely limited resources you have at your disposal and the extreme conditions (such as non-sterile areas, no anesthesiologist to assist you, etc.) in which you are working?
Felix Abt: When there is a shortage of almost everything—supplies, staff, hospital beds and facilities—the health workers in Gaza not only have to make inhumane sacrifices, but also have to make serious decisions and practically decide which patient can continue to live and which has to die, “playing God” so to speak. In addition, you can be in constant fear for your life, as you could be hit by an Israeli bomb at any time. In fact, journalists and medical personnel seem to be among the main targets of the Israeli “defense” forces. How do you cope with this incredible psychological strain on top of the extreme working conditions?
Dr. S.A. Khan: The last question is easy…and with humor. The Gazans have a very dry wit and are extremely generous people…That’s probably why I get on with Gazans…I have described them as the ”Pathans [Pashtuns] of the Middle East”….an Afghan tribe!
“Swimming with the fish” as my Norwegian colleague Eric from Norway would say….When you sit, and eat, and you work together and stop for a smoke…you become part of the team but you then direct the team, as there has been no senior doctor for weeks at the hospital.
Felix Abt: On January 5, UNICEF reported that “cases of diarrhea in children are up 50 percent in just one week, with 90 percent of children under two now subject to ‘severe food poverty.’” Now, with thousands of children already dead as a result of the violence, it looks like a tsunami of child deaths is on the horizon. And the trickle of aid [the amount and type of which is controlled by the occupying forces] is not making the situation any better. How do you assess this situation?
Dr. S.A. Khan: I had a WhatsApp message that one of the patients I treated had [contracted] hepatitis A…the living conditions will only get worse from an already bad situation.
Felix Abt: Hamas has been trying for years to persuade Israel to release the countless Palestinians, including children, many of whom have been imprisoned for years without trial. After failing to do so, it tried to take Israelis hostage on October 7 to force the release of the Palestinian prisoners. As a result of the hostage exchange, the returned Palestinians stated that many of them had been horribly mistreated [including torture and rape] in Israeli prisons. Did you or your colleagues have the opportunity to talk to the returnees and possibly have them medically examined?
Dr. S.A. Khan: NO COMMENT. As a humanitarian, I treat all injured irrespective of who they are…but we also do not disclose those we have treated, unless we have permission from the patient.
Felix Abt: Is there anything else readers should know?
Dr. S.A. Khan: Stop attacking hospitals…a BIG FULL STOP…Let the humanitarian agencies do their work.
Felix Abt: Is there anything readers can do, such as donate money to the Mobile International Surgical Teams (MIST)?
Dr. S.A. Khan: [Any] money donated goes to buying kits and consumables….All MIST members are volunteers and do not profit from any of their endeavors. Visit our website to donate: www.mistngo.co.uk
MIST builds capacity and supports surgical centers in developing countries to become self-sustaining and provide excellent health care to local populations, regardless of the race, religion, or nationality of patients, and without adverse discrimination of any kind.
If you approve of this article, please share it with your friends and kin.
Help us expand our reach. Defeat appalling hypocrisy. Lies cost countless lives.
We must act together to smash the VILE Western disinformation machine.
This is the Lying Machine that protects the greatest evil humanity has ever seen.
YOU know what we are talking about.
Things to keep in mind...
Neo-Nazi ideology has become one of the main protagonists of political and social life in Ukraine since the 2014 coup d'état. Meanwhile, fascist ideology and blatant lies also permeate the consciousness of most people in the West. Those in the comfortable top 10%, the "PMCs" (Professional Managerial Class), are especially vulnerable. They support and disseminate such ideas. They are the executors of the actual ruling class' orders, those in the 0.001%, who remain largely invisible. The PMCs are the political class, the media whores, the top military brass, some people in academia, and the "national security/foreign policy" industry honchos. Push back against these unethical, contaminated people with the truth while you can.
The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience.
Since the overpaid media shills will never risk their careers to report the truth, the world must rely on citizen journalists to provide the facts that explain reality.
Unfortunately, most people take this site for granted. DONATIONS HAVE ALMOST DRIED UP… PLEASE send what you can today! JUST USE THE BUTTON BELOW
Garland Nixon
