No Israeli Win in Al Shujaiyia!  

• CrossFireArabia
• June 28, 2024

The battle for the Al Shujaiyia starts but this will again be a tough fight for the Israeli army who are determined to subdue the area despite high expectations to the contrary.

Israeli troops under air-cover and aerial bombardment, are entering the destroyed town for the third time and in as many months but to no apparent success.

For the Israeli army, this neighborhood stands as a sore thumb, and a degrading one. Here, the Palestinian resistance rubbed the noses of the Israeli army despite their high-tech dumb bombs provided by their American backers.

Al Shujaiyia, which lies one kilometer away from the siege into Israel, holds bad memories for the Israeli army. Jewish soldiers know that, so do their superiors but the extreme government of Benjamin Netanyahu does not want to listen.

In Al Shujaiyia the Israeli were marred. Their nervous, trigger-happy soldiers killed three of the Israeli hostages back in December, 2023 under what is euphemistically-termed ‘friendly fire”.  Despite the three opaqually waving white flags and shouting in Hebrew, they were shot point-blank many argue under the Israeli military Hannibal doctrine that states soldiers and hostages should be killed rather than taken alive.

Today Israeli ground troops invade the ruined town yet again, determined to get their pound of flesh and despite the rubble and the wreckage which they instituted.

There are no homes here, but people have refused to leave, making do with what they have, living in their bomb-crated homes. But this is another turn story in their “war life”.

 The Israeli army says its invading the beleaguered neighborhood once again because of their intelligence sources saying there are Palestinian resistance fighters here. But this is a surprise. These fighters never left and reformed their strength with maneuverability and slickness.

The Palestinian resistance in Gaza today is a broad movement: They include Al-Quds Brigade, Al-Qassam Brigade, Al-Aqsa Brigade, and the PFLP and are fighting the Israeli occupier in tandem with strategic moves to beat the enemy.

In reality, Al Shujaiyia has always remained resistance territory. It has been the grave of Israeli soldiers. But the Israeli army like to say that as a public relations exercise to give the feeling they are winning. They said that in Jabalia, in Beit Lahia, in Al Zaytoon and in Khan Younis, stressing they entered these places, ended the presence of the Hamas resistance there, and left.

If they quashed the Palestinian resistance there, why would they enter these places many times after?

In the first hours of their entry in Al Shujaiyia, Israeli troops faced at least 10 military operations against them by Hamas and Saraya Al Quds fighters.

The drainage of Israeli troop and hardware losses continued with news of one Merkava 4-tank blown up as well as troop carrier not to say anything about the IED planted bombs on the ashphalt carved Baghdad Road.

Like elsewhere, the army is hoping for victory here, but there seems to be a deluge of Palestinian fighters coming from below grounds to continue the fight against the Israeli occupation invaders. In Al Shujaiyia they will have no respite.

Once historians sit and write the history of this war, they will find Al Shujaiyia has been the toughest for the Israeli army despite the enormous levels of destruction where the fight has been between vastly unequal opponents: Guerilla groups trained in the art of urban warfare versus an unwieldly Israeli army beset by organizational and logistical movements but deadly just the same.

In this war it has been the Palestinian fighters in jeans and home-made missiles from pipe tubes that proved their worthiness over the Israeli enemy.

The entry of Israeli troops however, has caused havoc on the population of Al Shujaiyia which has been a usual affair in this war as civilians have suffered the most. Up till till now they managed to stay in their wrecked homes but no more with reports of hundreds leaving their neighborhood to an even bleaker future.

Its a vicious war machine after nine months of bloody mayhem and conflict. The killings continue, the bombardment never stops and the injured, the lucky few are dragged from under the rubble while thousands are eaten alive by mother earth. At least 15 people were killed in the first few hours of troops entering the neighborhood.

As usual Israeli troops – and they know it – will not be able to get to the resistance fighters. All the Israeli army will be doing – and this is a credit to their already soured professionalism – is create more death, injury, displacement among the civilian population.

‘US Presidents Know The Rules’ –  Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé 

• CrossFireArabia
• June 5, 2024

Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian and a political scientist and now is a lecturer at the University of Exeter in the UK. In 2008 he left Israel after receiving death threats about his view on the Palestinian question as member of “Israel’s New Historians” which questioned the official narrative that Palestinians left of their own free will in 1948. He says on the contrary, there was a systematic attempt by Israeli leaders to drive them out of their lands. Subsequently more than 750,000 Palestinians were forced out and made into refugees.

In the following short videoclip he offers a sussinct view of US foreign policy and how American foreign policy from at least Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama and now Joe Biden with their “tunnel-support” permanent pro-Israel.

“…So when people say why does Biden so automatically supports Israel he knows the rules, he knows what happened to anyone who even dare to slightly, like Obama, or Carter, anyone who slightly challenged. What happened to them?,” Pappé said.

“You read Obama’s Memour’s, you can see how he said ‘I suddenly understood any word  I am saying on Israel can bring down [the US] Congress.  

Pappé  said Obama admitted when he commented “I could not be loyal to my basic instinct which is to be pro-Palestinians. Because I wouldn’t be a president.”

American Bombs, Israeli Slaughter 

• CrossFireArabia
• May 25, 2024

Congressmen Bernie Sanders Tells Joe Biden ‘You Can Stop This War’ right now, just don’t provide Israel with any more weapons. 

Congressmen Bernie Sanders said the US government needs to stop financing the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. He was speaking on the X platform, stressing the fact there are thousands of children who are being starved in Gaza.

He told CNN the weapons used by the Israeli army in the latest “flour massacre” that killed 112 people and upwards to more than 700 people through Israeli snipers and tanks, was paid from the pockets of the American taxpayer. He stressed Washington needs to stop financing the Israeli army. 

Sanders, a US Senator for Vermont, is one of the strongest critics of the stand of the American government supporting Israel and he is not a lone voice in America.

Washington has been the main financier and military supplier in this Israeli war against Gaza. At the start of the third month of the war on Gaza, the US already supplied Israel with 10,000 tons worth of arms to Israel through 200 cargo planes. Today, and six-month into the war, the military supply chain is still going strong with more of the same. 

In the initial stages of the war following 7 October 2000 so-called military “advisors” were sent to Israel with US warships – USS Gerald Ford USS Dwight D. Eisenhower – scurrying to the east Mediterranean Sea. Today, these advisors are being beefed up by US mercenaries.

An American war

It would appear that most of the bombs dropped on Gaza are US made. In addition to the bunk busters which borrow deep into the ground before exploding turning Gaza into a graveyard, Washington has allowed itself to be an active participant in this war by supplying different types of bombs and shells that are too numerous to mention and name like the MK 82, MK 84 bombs, dumb bombs, air-to-surface munitions as well as thousands and thousands of ammunitions. 

In terms of mass destruction Israel has been dropping two- three- and even four-ton bombs on Gaza. This has never been the case even when the US has been bombing ISIS-strong holds in Syria and even Afghanistan. The devastation of 2000-pound-bombs dropped have been analyzed on CNN. 

This is certainly an American war on Gaza, but throughout this conflict, Washington has also tried to look reasonable. While supplying weapons to Israel through the White House and bypassing the US Congress, US President Joe Biden and his team have said they are for the status quo in Gaza, against the expulsion of the Palestinians into neighboring Sinai and want to see the revival of a two-state solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

But this has fallen on deaf ears despite the daily contact between US and Israeli officials. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long ignored such utterances and even recently introduced a draft law against the two-state solution that was passed by the Knesset making such recognition of a two-state solution as a illegal. This is seen as an snub to the American administration that refuses to increase pressure on Israel despite the mass onslaught and the “plausible genocide” as termed by the International Court of Justice that is being committed by Israel in Gaza.

Israel is riding roughshod on the Americans precisely because of the fact Biden keeps reiterating the fact he is a committed “Zionist” and refuses to stop the flow of weapons into Israel while the US Congress continues to support Israel with direct aid and monies even though a sizable group in the Democratic Party are criticizing the actions of the American president. 

‘You can’t beat the resistance’

Meanwhile the American president continues to watch the murderous actions of the Israeli army and the refusal of Netanyahu to stop the war against Gaza and his insistence on eliminating Hamas. But in his heart, Netanyahu must feel, as everyone else, including the US administration he can’t do that, after six months of bombing the living day light out of Gaza. 

What the Israeli army is doing now, is continuing to kill civilians on the ground – the figure dubbed currently at over 30,000 with more than 70,000 injured. As well, rather than combing Gaza from the north to the south and working, Israeli soldiers are finding out that Gaza is a tough series of battles. 

Instead of concentrating in the south which they have promised to do in the stages they planned, they are bogged in below-center areas like Khan Younis and are having to go and fight in northern areas like Al Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City, Jabalia and Biet Lahia where the Palestinian resistance is putting up stiff resistance and where Israeli tanks are dying by the die in their thousands and their tanks continue to be destroyed in their hundreds. 

Ninety percent for instance, of the underground tunnels are intact. These Hamas and Jihad fighters are still below ground and keep come up for the kill and battle despite the fact Israeli politicians and military keep saying they are destroying the “terror infrastructure.” But by their own admission also, Palestinian resistance fighters keep coming up and destroying. 

Meanwhile, bombs and munitions in a constant stream, continues to be provided by the Americans as they talk of the necessity of peace to all good men and satisfying themselves with making the first American food airdrop on Gaza whilst determined not to be outwitted by other countries like Jordan, Egypt, France and Italy. But rather than moaning about Netanyahu, America can stop this war rather than be engaged in this new campaign to attempt to save Gaza from starvation imposed by its very good friend and strategic partner Benjamin Netanyahu who fears jail if he stops bombing Gaza because of his corruption accusations. 

Everyone is hoping still there would be some kind of a ceasefire come the Muslim month of Ramadan shortly. If Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are not convinced, the blood bath will likely continue because of the expected onslaught on Rafah and with the Israeli hostages held in Hamas tunnels be ever more in peril. Their number, originally thought at 136 are down much lower according to Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida who says at least 70 of them have been killed so far by Israeli bombs. 

Will they be any left by the time the war is put to an end?