‘Tent Massacre’ is Israel’s Latest Crime of Crimes

• CrossFireArabia
• May 28, 2024

The new massacre in Rafah shows the length of depravity of the Israeli army when 45 people were killed when they were asleep and 249 burned alive.

The tent massacre that occurred in Rafah, Sunday, is being called as the “crime of crimes” by ex-UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness.

This is yet another horrifying massacre which Israeli warplanes carried out on displaced civilians mostly women, children and the old who were fast sleep. Eight American-made 2000-pound bombs reigned down on them jolting into shock while sending many to their graves.

The result was massive explosions in the tent camp that led to extensive fires, the burning of tents and the churred bodies that ensured.  The sum total of deaths where 45 and 249 injured with extensive burns.

The massive attack on a makeshift displacement center run by UNRWA was in Tal Al Sultan which the Israelis previously designated as safe area but in Gaza nowhere is safe.

It was a horrible sight. The area was totally devastated with the smell of burning human flesh flowing as survivors went from one tent to another searching for their relatives and whimpering at the ones they lost.  

There were more ugliness. One report spoke of a child’s head and legs decapitated and were entire families were wiped out. This is a really massacre under a horrified world.

“Her head was cut off. I can’t recognize her,” one man mourns of one of his female relatives as he supplicates to God on the night of the massacre.

Tents were melting and the people’s bodies were also melting…” one eyewitness who arrived at the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah said.

The scene was out of a book of horror stories.  French president Emmanuel Macron was outraged at the new massacre. So was Turkish president  Recep Tayyip Erdogan, calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “barbaric” and that Turkey will do “everything possible to hold these barbarians and murders accountable.”

Spain, a country that just officially recognized an independent Palestinian state, and under its Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares expressed his horror at the Rafah tent massacre.

But he wasn’t the only one. Canada, a staunch Israeli ally, also expressed its abhorrence at the massacre. “We are horrified by the strikes that killed Palestinian civilians in Rafah,” Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly wrote on the social media platform X and as quoted by the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Condemnation of the Israeli massacre has come from all over the world. The Europeans are particularly angry as lead by EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell who expressed his dismay at the strikes on the Tel Al Sultan tent camp while writing on his X account

“Horrified by news coming out of Rafah on Israeli strikes killing dozens od displaced persons including small children. I condemn this in the strongest terms. There is no safe place in Gaza. These attacks must stop immediately.”

President of the European Council Charles Michel also said it was horrendous to see innocent civilians killed on the Israel attack on the tent camp of displaced persons in Rafah and called on the Israeli government to fully respect the International Court of Justice and to stop its military offensive on Rafah.

In a bid to contain the international heat on him Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later called the Rafah massacre as a “tragic mishap”. He told the Knesset the Israei army was looking for Hamas fighters and that “despite our efforts not to hurt them [civilians] there was a tragic mishap. We are investigatinh the incident.”

Such language speaks of sheer hipocracy because the daily civilian death toll now stands at over 36,000 people with 81,000 injured, since Israel started the war on the Gaza Strip after 7 October, 2023.

This is besides the fact Netabyhu insists on sending the troops in Rafah despite the fact that there has been over 100 attacks on this small city just in the past two weeks.  

One finally commented “Israel’s bloodbath on Rafah…marks a new nadir in its savagery against Palestinians.” He says everyday a new threshold of savagery is crossed, just when we think we can’t see anything more heinous but Israel keeps going to greater depth.

Egyptian Soldier Killed in Israeli Clash on Rafah Crossing

• CrossFireArabia
• May 27, 2024

In an unusual development Egyptian soldiers fired on Israeli soldiers at the Rafah Crossing in Gaza on Monday. Israeli soldiers returned fire it was reported. But then a clash ensued between members of the two armies that resulted in the killing of one Israel soldier.

This piece of news was quickly quashed by the Israeli military censors according to the Al Jazeera Arabic channel but it was soon all over the social media with Israel’s Channel 13 and Channel 14 quickly confirming the news on the southern border of Gaza.

This is breaking news with the Israeli army saying it is opening up a full investigation into the incident that is almost certain to sour the already tense relations between Israel and Egypt over the possible invasion of Rafah by the Israeli army and which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on.

No injuries were reported at the time but then clashes but it was later reported one Egyptian soldier killed and at least several injured. The Egyptian side said it was two in the middle of a full investigation to see exactly what happened.

Gaza and The Israeli Killer Instinct

• CrossFireArabia
• May 27, 2024

By Dr Marwan Asmar

The Israeli war on Gaza is moving full-blast ahead despite international pressure to have it stopped. The Israeli government is neither listening to the International Court of Justice nor to the World Criminal Court to end the bloody conflict on Gaza that long passed genocide and ethnic cleansing.

https://twitter.com/swilkinsonbc/status/1794680685946626125

If anything, Israel is moving ahead with its military offensive in all of Gaza, beating, starving and massacring Palestinians from the south, middle and north of the enclave with more US-made bombs and missiles willingly given to Israel.

The Israeli army is in the middle of a protracted military campaign in Jabalia, Al Nazla, Biet Lahia, Tal Al Zaatar and Beit Hanoon. All they can do is destroy more houses of ordinary people and who in turn move to schools which are bombed by the Israelis. It’s a vicious cycle.

But Israelis soldiers are not being let off the hook easily. Together with their armory and tanks, they are facing stiff resistance from Palestinian fighters and their soldiers and tanks are being killed and destroyed by the day.  

To be noted is the fact that while the bombs are reigning down on Gaza, Israeli politicians pay lip service to mediation and the freeing of the Israeli hostages – now at 125 or so – but this might be to keep the Americans happy and keep the war going for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is only interested in a war momentum.

Following are different videos showing the extent of the depravation Israeli soldiers are being reduced to in their slaughter on ordinary Palestinian civilians.

It’s a sick society. An Israeli soldier dangling a baby’s sock says “my hobby is to inhale 10 Palestinian baby’s socks a day after I kill them.” This soldier, which Israel should be proud, of was “neutralized” recently by the Palestinian resistance.

This is Israel’s “most moral army in the world” as termed by Netanyahu. Shocking footage captured by Israeli soldier/photographer Yoni Pasha shows the extent of the war crimes in Khan Younis committed by the Israeli army.

Pasha uploaded the footage, shot on 12, 20 February 2024, was uploaded on the social media. It shows the targetting and destroying of residential blocks, striking unarmed civilians and indescriminately firing artillery shells on homes of ordinary people.

Israeli soldiers never learn. They will keep invading Palestinian homes, but for them, this is fatal. And so is the case with a unit from the Golani Brigade.

They recently entered one of the houses in Jabalia to no doubt, rest and take pictures from the bedrooms there as reported by Rozan Qabass Aal Salem, who is a Yemeni Jew.

An image of at least four soldiers shows them stretched out  and happy, but not for long. Little did they realize the house was bobbytrapped by Hamas fighters and moments later, it blew up burying the soldiers under the rubble, no doubt following the thousands – estimated at over 10,000 Palestinians – who continued to be immersed in the Gaza mother earth because of Israeli bombing.

The scale of destruction and debris has probably never been known by mankind especially, if you take the time period, the geographical space of Gaza which is around 364 kilometers.

In just 200 days – and now its 234 since the bloody war on the territory began – the Israeli military dropped 75,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip. Besides turing 80 percent of the area into rubble and wreckage, the explosives equate to more than 37 nuclear bombs – a disaster for humanity being dragged by Israel on the brim purgatory and hell.

This should be seen as absolute madness by the moral West. The United States is a major conspirator in this war providing an air-and-sea bridge of weapons and mass weapons to fuel the war which so far killed over 35,000 people mostly women and children and injured over 80,000.  

The Israeli war on Gaza, although intense has not satisfied the “blood-thirst” of many Israelis according to one video posted. It shows the pledge of one claimed soldier to Netanyahu and says there are 100,000 soldiers who will not leave Gaza to Hamas, Fatah and or the Palestinian Authority of the West Bank.

The soldier makes a direct challenge to Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and the Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi about their comments on the need to rethink the Gaza war the day after. Both men have said there must be new perspectives on Gaza.

The soldier talks of an impending military coup if Gallant and no doubt Halevi, put their full force behind Netanyahu which is to continue the war, invade Rafah and eradicate Hamas and the Palestinian resistance movment.

This is not happening despite the full military blast of the army. Yair Netanyahu, who is in Florida, and has been there for the duration of the war on its beaches, and no doubt avoiding military conscription, has posted the video-clip and then deleted it after pressure from the office of the Israeli prime minister, or so we are told.

Dr Asmar is an Amman-based writer covering Middle East Affairs

Iran In Shock After Deadly Fall Of Its President – OpEd

• CrossFireArabia
• May 24, 2024

After more than 15 hours the Iranian rescue teams managed to get to the fallen helicopter that killed president Ebrahim Raisi, his Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahain and the accompanying diplomatic team. 

t was a grueling search and rescue operation that involved moving on foot because of the difficult terrain of the mountainous, woods and forest areas in the north east region of Iran in the east Azebirgan province. 

While nobody is discounting foul play because the two other helicopters with the ‘presidential plane’ and which arrived safely at their destination in Tabriz, especially bad weather with strong wind and rain is being blamed on the final plane crash. 

All international agencies as well as the social media have followed the news of the search and rescue with trepidation. Some on the social media have been quick to blame Israel for being behind the crash. And who can blame them,  for Israel has long been associated with killing top Iranian generals and nuclear scientists.

Now Iran is in deep mourning and the shock is still to be absorbed for arrangements for different ceremonies and funerals are being made as eight people were killed on the helicopter including the personal body of Raisi who is known as a hardliner but have followed a pragmatic course to building relationships with the Arab world, Saudi Arabia, Russia and even the USA talking indirectly through Oman.

Raising had been in power for only three years. He was to complete his tenure next year in 2025. However while the search was continuing the country’s spiritual leader Ali Khamenei said the terrible incident wouldn’t affect the affairs of state.

Raisi’s first vice-president Mohammad Mokhbeir has already held an emergency cabinet meeting in Tehran. Constitutionally, he would be ruling with a committee of the speaker of the head of parliament and head of the judiciary for the next 50 days till a new president is elected.

It is not clear whether he would serve for one year or for full four years but this will be decided in the next weeks ahead and according to the interpretation of the constitution that would involve different political, constitutional, parliamentarian and constitutional authorities in the country.

What is for sure is the tragic incident has rekindled brotherly relations between Iran and different countries of the region. As soon as they heard, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and Turkey offered their help in the rescue operations with news that Ankara was actively taking part in the search.

Raisi was coming from an official ceremony related to a dam project ceremony with the Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev. 

The death of Raisi, 63, and his foreign minister is likely to produce new soul-searching among the Iranian political and diplomatic establishment but the status quo and stability will continue according to Ali Khamenei who is the final arbiter in the Iranian political system.