Miscellany: Sources, Opinions on the Israel-Gaza Conflict

Events move fast; you decide

• U.S. has vetoed two resolutions at the UN Security Council that called for a ceasefire, in Gaza

• Israel defense minister Gallant: After we destroy Hamas, Israel will create a new security reality for its citizens

• Israel ordered evacuated al-Quds Hospital, sheltering thousands of displaced civilians

• Relatives of U.S. ex-Congressman Justin Amash killed attack on St Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza

• Aid convoys are blocked outside Gaza, after two weeks, by Egypt and the U.S.

• People die in three or four days without water, or a month without food

• Two U.S. citizens released from hostage in Gaza

• Israel tells citizens to leave Egypt, Jordan ‘as soon as possible’

• China. Saudi, Iran coalesce against what they see as imperial policy

• Amnesty International says war crimes include elimination of entire families

• Over 4,000 Palestinians killed by strikes in retaliation for killing of 1,400 Israelis

• Lew Lexner of Jeffrey Epstein pal cuts ties with Harvard over student protests

(Words 2,100 or about 10 minutes of your company.)

Oct 21, 2023

And so, where do we start — where do we stand?

Israelis' trust in their own government has fallen to a new low after the intelligence failure before the attack of Oct 7, the failure a high tech border fence, the lagging military response and "a government that seems to have busied itself with the wrong things and now appears largely absent and dysfunctional."

The quote comes from a post picked up by Elon Musk, that explores the failures of the institutional news media by comparing it to proprietary software vs open source.

It's now established that hackable vulnerabilities are fixed more slowly in proprietary software, and much more quickly when the community can contribute to open source.

News institutions suffer the same weakness from keeping the process "under their vest."

"It is easy to cry "misinformation" but that is not what is going on. Misinformation is when actors deliberately falsify what is going on. Sharing something and having an opinion as just a random person isn't that. It is misinformation for institutions that trade on trust and truthfulness to put forth information that has not been vetted by a community or has not used all available sources. News gathering has come far enough now to know that the news is not simply what one actor said off the record confirmed by a person down the hall from that actor. The actors themselves have to deal with open-source information and make a case that stands up to the sources available to everyone.

Journalists then were exceedingly well-intentioned and did all they could at the time and acted with integrity as much as any profession. That is no different than what commercial software used to be—it was the right way and only way to make software at the time.

Disruption has many forms. We tend to focus on specific technologies and markets and the business impact. What we witnessed yesterday was a prime example of old-school versus modern reporting in a fluid, chaotic, and difficult situation. I believe it is incredibly important to take lessons from this and to adjust our view of what is reliable at the time."

Click on the Tweet image to open it.

CNN’s reporters in the West Bank got their you-know-what handed to them in the West Bank... for their relentless efforts to shoe-horn everything into a one-sided perspective.

And here's Mnar Muhawesh Adley, founder, CEO, and editor in chief of MintPress News, explaining perfectly why companies like CNN are structurally and ideologically incapable of reporting honestly from places like Palestine. [1]

You should know by now that the breakdown in trust is not to be blamed on the "alt media" or Canadian truckers or Dutch farmers or those harmed by the vaccine who protest against the censoring of their voices on Facebook.

A revealing news article in The New York Times explains the aftermath. It includes:

“A total breakdown of trust between the citizens and the state of Israel, and a collapse of everything Israelis believed in and relied on. Initial assessments point to an Israeli intelligence failure before the surprise attack, the failure of a sophisticated border barrier, the military’s slow initial response and a government that seems to have busied itself with the wrong things and now appears largely absent and dysfunctional.

Nahum Barnea, a prominent Israeli commentator, put it this way: ‘We are mourning for those who were murdered, but the loss does not end there: It is the state that we lost’."

Jeffrey Tucker points out that Covid was responsible in large part for breaking trust in government. [2]

The courts have become politicised. Three years after the death of George Floyd, which led to destructive riots (which Catherine Austin Fitts tallied with areas slated for redevelopment), and to the Defund The Police movement, which led to the commercial delamination of inner cities, with the suppliers of staple goods now fleeing...

... all was based on a politically manipulated court case. [3]

And now we get to the big move.

On October 16th a BBC report promoted the allegation that Hamas constructed tunnels “under hospitals in schools,” reportedly in response to a question from a curious “anonymous reader.” [4]

The very next day, Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital was bombed. [5]

Next the third oldest church in Christandome, St Porphyrius of Gaza, and Israeli forces continue to issue threats to religious institutions and hospitals.

Who sez?

Did you know Europe's biggest publisher Axel Springer, named after the journalist who founded it in the 1940s (with OSS-CIA funding), has long been a staunch supporter of Israel. On its website, the second of the company’s five core principles reads, “We support the Jewish people and the right of existence of the State of Israel.”

The company, which owns some of Europe’s most-read publications, including Die Welt and Bild, apparently requires its European employees to sign a pledge in support of “the trans-Atlantic alliance and Israel, among other favored values,” according to Smith’s report.

Rappoport reports

"Mainstream media aren’t talking about it, but it’s an open secret: some 50 years ago, the US and Israel created Hamas—as an offset and competitor to Yasser Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization.

Of course, CIA and Mossad expanded their mandates and operations. Immediately. And that’s where the real trouble came.

'Let’s subvert our enemies. Let’s undertake hundreds and thousands of clandestine operations to neutralize and destroy our enemies. In the process, we can invent groups who will serve us and do the destroying for us…'

Yeah. Sure. A perfect formula for suicide. And it caters to exactly the people you never want to give any power to. The chessboard game-playing crazies. Namely, your own operations case officers and planners.

THESE guys are loved by all sorts of big-time corporate and financial players (in the US and Israel), who are looking for a leg up in their foreign expansions efforts: finding new resources abroad, finding new markets, finding new corrupt allies.
Protecting national interests becomes EMPIRE."[6]

And finally

Greta Thunberg went off the reservation when she highlighted the plight of the people of Gaza.

She was curiously shamed by the usual suspects because she had a comforter next to her - a blue octopus, which the usual suspects said was an anti-Semitic trope.

Greta responded that it is commonly used by autistic youth to help them communicate.

I crafted what I thought was a useful thread and posted it to Greta's 5.6 million followers. I got zero responses.

In case it is deleted, here is my exchange. I included in the Tweets the hashtags that Greta had originally posted: #FreePalestine #IStandWithPalestine #StandWithGaza in order to reach the recipients of her original post.

1/ Speech police went nuts when .@GretaThunberg appeared with a blue octopus plushy!

They said Greta's toy was the latest anti-Semitic trope you never knew you didn't know.

Greta folded to the pressure; deleted Squidward.

2/ Of course, it wasn't the toy that annoyed. It was .@GretaThunberg's call for a general strike in 'solidarity with #Palestine and #Gaza.'

Young people have the least support for a pro-Israel stance.

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/13/1205627092/american-support-israel-biden-middle-east-hamas-poll

3/ The #octopus has a long history in political cartoons. Examples: the trap of substance abuse; and both sides of politics - the 'red menace' and workers' fight against exploitation... ... ...

4/ ... and the grip of finance capital.

This 1912 cartoon by Alfred Owen predicted the danger of private bankers seizing control of our financial system.

The next year the Rockefeller-Aldrich plan created the #FederalReserve.