Israel is Burning: Here’s Why!

By Dr Marwan Asmar

(Crossfirearabia.com) – Israel is burning. Its war on Gaza is going nowhere, Israeli society is being torn-apart, and its remaining 59 hostages remain in the depth of the tunnels in Gaza unable to be found. Its like looking for a needle in a haystack because of the extensive hundreds of miles of underground! Many, except Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, people like US Envoy Steve Witkoff believe the hostages, 24 still alive, are likely to die if the war is not brought to an end.

After 18 months of bloodshed on the Gaza Strip with its endless destruction, Israel is nowhere near to reaching its objectivity of stamping out Hamas. The Islamist organizations remains just as strong, determined and willing for martyrdom as when the fighters unleashed themselves soon after 7 October, 2023.

On the contrary all the Israeli government did by insisting on the continuation of the war on the Palestinian territory has created the wrath of many world nations, including the irritation of US president Donald Trump who has cut off contacts with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and who now feels the latter can no longer be trusted for a meaningful end to the fighting.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army which is back fighting on Gaza not of its own accord, is facing what can all be called the “Gaza malaise” of being entrapped in the Strip through ambushes, booby-trapped, once-standing houses and Palestinian resistance missiles, ammunitions and artillery.

Israel and its army – despite the killing of over 52,000 Palestinians, 100,000 injured with over 12000 remaining under the rubble – is facing the worst of times, bogged down, through its own accord in an enclave it is determined not to leave while shamelessly embarking on a spree of killing, murder and mass-bombing civilians under the intrepid eyes of the world and documented by international agencies. In fact, many experts, including Israelis, say this is the worst documented genocide which the Jewish state will not be able to live it down.  

Meanwhile, the Palestinian resistance lead by Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters and a motley of other determined factions led by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are wreaking havoc among Israeli soldiers and their killer machines of tanks, all over the Gaza Strip from its far north, center and its south.

Privately the Israeli army is complaining because of the orders they are following from extremist politicians like Netanyahu. And they have a right to be because they have literally bombarded every nook and cranny in Gaza, forcing its 2.1 million populations on a whirlwind pool of displacements not once, not twice but up to 10 times to squat from one place to another but to no avail.

How can civilians, mostly women and children living in tents – for this is what Gaza has been reduced to – be military targets with mass bombs dropped on schools and hospital. For this is what the Israeli army is, an impressive air force, thousands of tanks and mass bombs supplied by the Americans, British and many more countries have been reduced to.

There are no Palestinians fighters here, they don’t lounge among civilians in makeshift UN schools. The fighters are in bombed houses, Israeli-gorged out what used to be manicured-gardens and residential squares, in semblance of buildings that used to be ministries, ruined university halls, restaurants, shops and libraries and much more.

Israel has made sure these longer exist. However, the Palestinian groups have came to fight among the rubble of these places that are bombed and re-bombed time and again like a macabre scene never existed before.

In many of these places, different neighborhoods of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip to the north the bombed-out town of Beit Hanoon to Al Tuffah in Gaza City and Shuja’iyya to the east, near the wall that divided Gaza from Israel, the rubble and wreckage has become so bad that Israelis, for the most part, are no longer able to enter their tanks, bulldozers and other heavy machinery.

The soldiers have to go on foot with their machine-guns and backpack of bombs and other “vile little goodies”. Frequently, and today, much more so, they would be running from one place to another fearful of being sniped by Palestinian fighters.

Since Israel re-started its war on the Gaza Strip after 19 March, and as the Palestinian fighters geared for action weeks later, ambushes of Israeli soldiers were stepped in in the different areas of Gaza. These ambushes resulted in the death and injury – on a daily basis of many Israeli soldiers.

While the Israeli army – and it has been so throughout this war – trying to massage and downplay the number of Israeli dead, this has not worked because of the Israeli media, the internet and power of satellite television which meant that the image and the picture – even by Israeli soldiers themselves – has been instant and at the ready ready to be posted online.

As to the intensity of the fighting when satellite television provide pictures of helicopters, both like a scene of the ambush, the booby-trapped house and landing on top of Israeli hospitals, in Tel Aviv for instance, experts said one can be sure the number of Israeli dead and injured is large because Israeli soldiers on the ground on Gaza have with them medical teams to deal with immediate emergencies.

If helicopters to be transported to hospitals are brought in, they argue the number of ‘critically’ wounded and dead is sure to be much higher and that means the resistance is meting out powerful blows at the Israeli soldiers thousands who have been protesting in this latest military campaign that they don’t want to go back to fighting in Gaza in a recent memo signed by 200,000 rank-and-file soldiers and some even prepared to go to prison for disobeying orders.

The dismay among the Israeli soldiers have been highlighted by the booby-trapped housing. In one case recent case in Al Jenienah neighborhood in Rafah, a group of Israeli soldiers with their dogs walked into what appeared to be a booby-trapped disused building and which exploded immediately bringing in the transport helicopters. The place just blew up.

Such a situation is being repeated daily on the streets of Gaza, a strip proving a tough fight that can’t be conquered nor subdued. Just to go back to Shuja’iyya, a wrecked place which the Israeli army entered many times, and which history will associate with Palestinian courage, as its name in Arabic, as of Saturday morning a military transport vehicle was just blown up.

All the Israeli army first said that there has been a serious security incident there, with helicopters hovering at the scene on top of Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv. Later on the only owned up to two soldiers being killed and seven injured.

Brigadier-general Fayez Dwairi speaking on Al Jazeera says that the number of Israeli dead is likely to be between four and 12 depending whether we are talking about a Merkava tank and or a military vehicle that also carries 12 people. He points out the Israeli tanks is the only one in the world that has four operatives but has room for six additional soldiers.

Hence this is the battle Israel is currently waging. If Netanyahu insists that the war will continue then his army is likely to continue to face a vicious circle of death and mayhem as the Palestinian Israeli fighters will continue to mushroom.

Today the Palestinian resistance is still at the ready for with Gaza destroyed and mass wreckages that wrecks of death, they have nothing to look forward but to continue fighting especially against an Israeli government and army determined to fight Hamas and the other Palestinian factions till the end

This analysis is written by Dr Marwan Asmar, chief editor of the crossfirearabia.com website. 

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Hamas Welcomes New Pope in Rome

Hamas congratulated Cardinal Robert Prevost on Thursday for being elected the new pope, urging him to follow in the footsteps of Pope Francis, who was a strong advocate for the Palestinian cause and condemned Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Prevost, who will be known as Pope Leo XIV, was elected as the new pope by the Cardinals in a two-day conclave and will be the first American pontiff in history.

Hamas said in a statement it “extends its sincere congratulations to His Holiness Pope Leo XIV on the occasion of his election as Head of the Catholic Church.”

“We wish him success in fulfilling his spiritual and humanitarian mission at a time when the world faces profound crises and tragedies—chief among them, the ongoing brutal Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.”

“We highly value the principled and courageous humanitarian positions taken by the late Pope Francis, including his repeated expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people and his firm stance against the occupation and its repressive policies.”

“We look forward to His Holiness Pope Leo XIV continuing this ethical and moral path—standing with the oppressed, advocating for justice, and engaging actively within international forums to help end the crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing being perpetrated by the Israeli occupation against children, women, and unarmed civilians in Gaza.”

“We also call for action to halt the ongoing violations against Islamic and Christian holy sites throughout Palestine, and reaffirm the importance of upholding human dignity and religious sanctity everywhere.”

Pope Francis was a staunch advocate for Palestinians and kept in regular contact with Catholics in Gaza amid Israel’s assault. That included daily calls with the priest at the Holy Family Church in Gaza City, the only Catholic church in the Palestinian enclave.

Upon his death, Francis also donated his so-called “popemobile” to Gaza to serve as a mobile children’s clinic.
Pope Leo XIV has not said much publicly about Gaza, making it unclear if he will emulate his predecessor according to the Quds News Network.

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How The West Came to Control Arabism

Dr Elias Akleh

The Arab world lies in one of the most important global strategic locations, controlling most of the major commercial transportation routes. It is rich in natural agricultural and industrial resources and has always been a prime target for Western colonial powers, which periodically launched military campaigns to occupy and control our world, starting from the heart of the Arab world, Palestine, known as the Holy Land, and expanding to the Levant in the north — Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan— then to Egypt, and it’s rich in its fertile Nile River, and finally to the Arabian Peninsula in the south.

When we look back in history, we find these military colonial campaigns against the Arab world—especially Palestine—were numerous, even dating back to before Christ, such as the campaign of Alexander the Great (336 BC–323 BC) and the Roman colonial rule (63 BC–324 AD). Moving on to the ages after Christ, we recall, for example, the eight Crusades over nearly two centuries (1096–1291), followed by Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign (1799–1801), and finally the Talmudic Zionist campaign initiated by Theodor Herzl in 1896, which continues into the present day.

These post-Christ colonial campaigns were primarily charged with religious fervor and can be termed as religious wars. In fact, Pope Urban II in 1095 described them as a “holy war” to liberate the holy city of Jerusalem from the “brutal” Muslim Arabs. As for Napoleon Bonaparte, who was defeated at the walls of Acca, he promised the Jews he would help them reach the “Promised Land,” holy Jerusalem, if they aided him in his colonial campaign.

Finally, at the present time, Britain, France and Germany came first, followed by all the US presidents who started supporting Zionist colonialism financially, politically and militarily to “recover” the “Promised Land” promised by a “racist” god biased towards the Jews to “rebuild” the alleged Temple of Solomon in the city of Jerusalem and to build Greater Israel.

All these colonial campaigns attempted to divide the Arab world into small, weak states by perpetrating genocides against their many Arab peoples. They destroyed and burned cities, tortured and killed civilians, and raped women, girls, and even boys, just as Zionist Israel is doing now in Palestine. However, past genocides cannot be compared to the brutality and brutality of the Zionist genocide against the Arabs of Palestine, from 1947 to the present day, due to the power of modern, highly destructive and lethal weapons.

The Arab nation was able to defeat all past colonial campaigns because of the people’s sense of belonging to their homeland and their unity, undivided by distance or borders, and led by brave, honorable, national leaders who sought the best for the entire nation.

The western colonialists noticed this inherent sense of belonging within the nation and decided to target it. After World War II, Britain, then the Great Power, agreed with France in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, to break the pact it signed with Sharif Hussein bin Ali. This agreement divided the Middle East into small states, appointing rulers loyal first to Britain and then to the current American administrations.

To further weaken these Arab states, the Western Axis powers divided the economies and financial systems of these states, rendering them alien and compete with each other. They also sowed division and religious, regional, and ethnic animosity among the Arab nation, allowing Zionist colonialism to penetrate the Arab world, beginning with Palestine.

Unfortunately, most Arab leaders failed to attempt to restore Arab unity and unify the people, economy, and currency, as the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser attempted to. Instead, what was spread was division, hatred, competition, animosity, and even war among Arab peoples, as has happened in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, and what is currently happening in Arab African countries such as Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan.

Worst of all is the spread of the philosophy of distancing oneself from the problems of any neighboring Arab country. Some leaders consider that the wars that take place in a neighboring Arab country do not concern them as long as these wars do not affect their country, even in the short term. We see this now clearly in what is happening in Palestine, especially the extermination of the Arabs of Gaza.

The heads of neighboring Arab countries are trying to convince their people that their national interest requires non-interference and to distance themselves to avoid destructive wars and to leave the Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupation alone.

Israel, launching pad

It would be better for these leaders to warn and inform their people that Israel is a launching pad for a broad western colonial campaign aimed firstly at destroying the Arab homeland and colonizing it by planting Zionist terrorism in the form of the Israeli entity which aims to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates, from the far south of the Nile – on the Sudan borders – to the far north of the Euphrates – to the Turkish borders – to build what is called Greater Israel in the Promised Land promised by a racist land broker god to a criminal, savage, genocidal people.

Secondly, for this Zionist entity to grow from Great Israel to Greater Israel it is going to move to the south to include all of the Arabian Peninsula – to recover Khaybar and Yathrib and their dependencies – then move west to the northern coast of the African continent, extending to Morocco and control the entire Arab world, monopolizing  the most important strategic locations internationally, and global maritime trade routes between East and West, including the Strait of Hormuz on the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, passing through Bab al-Mandab Strait to the Red Sea, then via the Suez Canal to the ports of occupied Palestine, and from there to the Western world via the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. And across the Giberalter Strait to the Americas – the ultimate goal of the Greater Israel Project.

All we have to do is listen to and understand the Israeli (and American) statements, both public and broadcast, clearly and vociferously, that the goal of Israel and the West is to exterminate all Arabs, just as they did to the Native Americans—they call them Red Indians— to build Greater Israel and control the Arab world and its natural resources. The evidence of these goals is clear, such as the destruction of Iraq and the theft of its wealth, and the establishment of American military bases along the Arab states on the western coast of the Persian Gulf.

We also witnessed how the Western colonial powers destroyed, divided, and weakened Libya and stole its wealth, then spread enmity between Algeria and Morocco, waged a war of extermination in Sudan, and then divided Syria and Lebanon, weakened Jordan, and effectively occupied it with American, British, and French military bases. All that remains is Egypt, which is subjected to economic occupation through conditional World Bank debt and by allowing other countries to purchase Egyptian land, real estate, and companies, which will ultimately lead to Egypt’s economic collapse.

Many people from all over the world, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or language, are taking to the streets in massive, daily and weekly marches and demonstrations in solidarity with the Arabs of Palestine, against Israeli brutality, against Western countries, and against their own governments, which fund and supports Israel politically and militarily.

They wonder why the Arab peoples don’t take to the streets in solidarity with the Arabs of Palestine, demanding that their Arab governments personally intervene to protect and assist the Palestinians, instead of these governments begging for assistance from the powerless United Nations. Have the Arabs lost their humanity and solidarity with their Arab brothers in Palestine, or are they simply cowards and selfish and unable to do anything?

Dr. Elias Akleh is a Palestinian writer who contributed this article the Arabic Al Rai Al Youm website. This is a translated piece that was slightly edited at the end for the sake of brevity.

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