ZIONIST MONOLITH DISINTEGRATING

On September 2, 2024September 2, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, Palestine, Political Analysis, Popular ResistanceLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

On Monday 2^nd September the largest ‘Israeli’ trade union, along with a number of other organisations have called a strike in support of the ‘Hostages’ relatives’ organisation¹ in order to force Netanyahu to stop blocking a ceasefire agreement.

Two months ago, the Palestinian Resistance leadership accepted the 3-stage terms for an end to the current war in Palestine proposed by then US President Joe Biden, which he claimed to have been agreed by the Zionist Government.² However Netanyahu sabotaged the negotiations.

The Resistance is clear that a) no IOF can remain within the Gaza strip, b) there must be no impediment to the return of displaced people, d) the gates have to be opened to allow food, medication etc. to enter and those requiring special medical treatment to leave.

In addition, the Palestinian prisoners nominated for release in exchange of the ‘Israeli’ prisoners held in Gaza cannot be vetoed by Netanyahu, nor can the war resume once the ‘Israeli’ captives have been returned, two essentials with which the Zionist Prime Minister disagrees.

Netanyahu has also stipulated that it’s essential for State security that the IOF must remain in the ‘Netzarim Corridor’ in Gaza, which crosses a red line for the Resistance and which the IOF intelligence sector deny is necessary for security.

At the same time, Zionist government Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has called on military chiefs to resign and some high-rankers of the Intelligence sector of the military have indeed already done³ while another is reportedly about to do so.

Some ‘Israeli’ media commentators have reflected the dissension and openly criticised their government, not only because of the failure to prevent the October 7^th Palestinian breakout but also to defeat the armed resistance and rescue the ‘hostages’.

The latter has been one of the major drivers of huge protest demonstrations, including some against Netanyahu himself and some against his more fascist cabinet supporters, such as Benny Gantz.

Also adding to the dissatisfaction are the many ‘Israeli’ settlers who are in hotels or camps at Government expense, having left the northwestern occupied region due to Hezbollah bombing (mostly) the military there in support of the Palestinians facing genocidal IOF attacks.⁴

Northwestern occupied Palestine was also the producer of significant amounts of food for the general ‘Israeli’ population which it must now do without.

*Seen from Lebanon, Hezbollah rockets hit IOF installation 15 December 2023* *but could be a scene from almost any day since October 8th.* (Photo cred: *AFP*)

Then there’s the problem of replacing the numbers of dead and injured IOF, the true extent of which has been concealed by the Zionist state. This has led to the June removal of the exemption from military service of Haredi Jews , resulting in their protest demonstrations.⁵

One of the state’s main ports, ‘Eilat’ has declared bankruptcy⁶ due to radical reduction in shipping as a result of Yemeni targeting and Haifa is also suffering. In addition Zionist-friendly companies abroad are being boycotted and some have abandoned the Zionists as a result.⁷

This cannot be seen as any kind of opposition to Zionism within ‘Israeli’ society but rather as a reflection of deep divisions within Zionism itself; the state and the occupation project remains one of European settler colonialism, fundamentally expansionist and genocidal at its core.

Running alongside these elements is that of declining military confidence, both among the general population and in the IOF itself. This is a state that once felt itself invincible in the Middle East with its air force, intelligence services and ground forces – and of course huge US backing.

Despite all this, it has been unable to prevent the October 7^th breakout or subsequently in 10 months of genocidal bombardment and military invasions to defeat the Palestinian resistance nor to curtail Hezbollah’s attacks on the northwestern region from Lebanon.

The settler population is aware its much-vaunted air defence systems were unable to prevent Iran’s retaliation⁸ on 13^th April from hitting three military bases,⁹ or Hezbollah from hitting a number of military targets in its recent retaliation for the assassination of its senior officer Fouad.

Large numbers of ‘Israeli’ citizens, many of which hold dual citizenships are also leaving the Zionist state and reportedly the highest proportion of these are of Ashkenazi background, i.e eastern European rather than middle Eastern, African etc.

The monolith of Zionism in the Middle East is disintegrating but it will yet require some further pushing and blows to collapse it completely. This is the time for escalation of all kinds of activities to push the process to its logical and desired conclusion.

CAUSES OF THE EFFECT

What has brought about this state of affairs? Certainly a number of things but first and foremost we must applaud the Palestinian Resistance, comprising both its armed factions and the determination and resilience of a population in the midst of ten months of genocidal attacks.

The resilience of the population across the age and gender profiles, the resistance of the prisoners in the face of daily torture and slow starvation and the work of social and medical services have formed a solid background to fighters and development of effective weapons matching their targets.

To that has been added innovation in planning ambushes and in methods of attack, along with daring and sacrifice in carrying them out.

Secondly, the active support of the rest of the Axis of Resistance, first Hezbollah in Lebanon and the armed forces in Yemen, followed by the state of Iran and resistance groups in Iraq.

Next we must also acknowledge the solidarity front in particular in western states demonstrating, boycotting and sabotaging Zionist businesses and businesses and states colluding with Zionism.

In particular in the latter front stand the radical and revolutionary youth who have continued and even escalated their resistance in the face of state and Zionist violence, arrests and trials, fines and imprisonment, restrictions on and expulsions from their studies and loss of accommodation.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1The recent recovery by the IOF of the bodies of six of the Israeli prisoners taken by the Resistance on October 7^th seems to have been the impulse to convert months of protest demonstrations into a general strike. The bodies were found in a tunnel and original reports said they had died from suffocation, assumed to be from IOF bombing. Later a Resistance statement said they had been shot by the IOF in a rescue attempt while the IOF said the prisoners had been executed by the Resistance. It seems now that the Resistance’s statement was a metaphor as they say that since the Nusserat Massacre when in order to rescue four ‘Israeli’ prisoners the IOF bombed and shot nearly 300 Palestinians, mostly civilians, the Resistance guards now have different instructions in the event of an IOF attempt to rescue the prisoners.

2On 2^nd July.

3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ5zjY6S-iQ and https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240702-israel-sees-800-senior-army-officers-resign-this-year/

4 https://www.timesofisrael.com/6-months-on-70-of-evacuees-from-the-south-are-home-but-thousands-remain-in-hotels

5 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6p24expzd5o

6 https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/ports/attacks-red-sea-shipping-bankrupt-israeli-port

7For example French Axa Insurance https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/companies/arid-41460304.htm

8For Israel’s air strike on the Iranian Consulate in Beirut, Lebanon. Another Iranian retaliation is expected daily, for the August 4^th assassination of Hamas leader (and peace talks negotiator) Ismail Haniyeh on diplomatic visit to Iran.

9Including one close to ‘Tel Aviv’.

SOURCES & REFERENCES

General Strike: https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/israeli-union-demands-general-strike-after-hostages-deaths-1667504.html

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/mass-protests-erupt-in-tel-aviv-over-death-of-6-captives-in

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/02/israel-gaza-war-national-strike-hostages-ceasefire-netanyahu

IOF resignations: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240702-israel-sees-800-senior-army-officers-resign-this-year/

Haredi Jews now eligible for conscription: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6p24expzd5o

Axa Insurance divests from ‘Israeli’ banks: https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/companies/arid-41460304.html

Bankruptcy major ‘Israeli’ port: https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/ports/attacks-red-sea-shipping-bankrupt-israeli-port

Hundreds of thousands of ‘Israelis’ in hotels and camps: https://www.timesofisrael.com/6-months-on-70-of-evacuees-from-the-south-are-home-but-thousands-remain-in-hotels

‘Israeli’ court orders strike to end while large USA union supports the strike: https://www.thejournal.ie/israel-strike-6477007-Sep2024/

CENSORSHIP OVER PALESTINE EXPOSES SHAM OF WESTERN ‘FREE PRESS’

On August 29, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Civil Rights, Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Mass Media Criticism, Middle East, Palestine, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 2 mins.)

The image of freedom of the press in Western society has been undermined by the biased reporting of the corporate media and yet further by the wave of censorship of social media in recent years, including blocking media platforms.

Time and again readers have seen that the version of events reported is that which favours the western powers and if and when the latter’s enemies are reported it is done perfunctorily and often with an air of doubt.

In war zones, the reporters for western media tend to be embedded among western military and rarely among their opponents.

Media censorship was already rife on reporting the war in Ukraine but has spread higher and wider during the current ‘Israeli’ genocide in Palestine, causing increasing numbers of people to resort to social media news and commentary platforms. But these alternatives too are targeted in turn.

The Western powers have attacked social media platforms such as Telegram, arresting its founder a few days ago¹ and this week blocking to subscribers throughout the European Union the Resistance News Network, which reported throughout the day on events in the ‘Israeli’ genocide on Telegram.

*Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, currently under French State arrest.* (Image sourced: *Internet*)

Earlier this month the FBI raided the homes of two US citizens, Scott Ritter and Dimitri K. Simes, journalists whose broadcasting has been hosted by Russian media,² in alleged concern over possible Russian interference in the Presidential elections (!).

Both men have been critical of US foreign policy, which is likely the reason for intimidation through house searches, the same going for the UK police ‘welcome home’ upon Heathrow arrival of Richard Medhurst, an independent journalist and his arrest under ‘Anti-Terrorism’ law.³

Censorship in Reporting the War in Ukraine

Ukraine war news censorship has been running since 2014 but it really ramped up when Russia invaded in 2022. Any prominent individual or site, whether pro-Russia or just NATO-critical that challenged or did not follow the western imperialist line, was soon subjected to censorship.

Pablo González, a dual-nationality Basque reporter, was threatened by Ukrainian intelligence agents and then arrested and jailed in Poland, allegedly for spying for Russia. No evidence was produced during the 886 days he was jailed but now he’s released⁴ they claim they have a lot.

The Russia-based site RT America was closed down in the USA in 2022,⁵ as was RT UK in the UK.⁶

Oliver Stone’s documentary Ukraine On Fire was removed from YouTube⁷ and veteran conflict reporter and author Christopher Hedges, who left his post as Middle East reporter for the New York Times because of the paper’s censorship, was censored again by YouTube.⁸

*Oliver Stone’s acclaimed documentary on Ukraine prior to Russian invasion was removed by Youtube.*

The Grayzone electronic media outlet was characterised as a ‘pro-Russia’ site and veteran anti-imperialist and celebrated linguist Naom Chomsky was accused of being naive or also biased towards Russia.

To what would be their shame if they were capable of such a saving grace, much of the western Left and liberals, both reformist and revolutionary-claiming sections, rowed in behind the censors and labelled all who didn’t swallow their line, including Chomsky⁹ as “Putinistas”.

The reporting of the western mass media was accepted uncritically while any alternative reporting was attacked, some being characterised as Russian-backed media (in contrast with the corporate media, which of course is free of bias!).

Challenging journalists have also disappeared in Ukraine, where regime-critical journalist Gonzalo Lira died in Ukrainian jail,¹⁰ whereas in Palestine, the Israeli Occupation Force had killed at least 116 journalists as August drew to a close.¹¹

In their acceptance of western censorship, those sections of the Left helped to ideologically prepare the ground for the wide-scale censorship around Palestine about which some of them complain bitterly now.

End.

Footnotes

1 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/telegram-messaging-app-ceo-pavel-durov-arrested-france-tf1-tv-says-2024-08-24/ Update: Durov’s arrest in custody had been extended (see References & Sources).

2 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-searched-homes-two-americans-with-ties-russian-state-media-2024-08-22/

3Medhurst is currently out on bail.

4In a prisoner exchange https://elpais.com/espana/2024-08-01/el-periodista-espanol-pablo-gonzalez-liberado-en-un-intercambio-de-presos-entre-ee-uu-y-rusia.html

5 https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202204/1258996.shtml

6‘The UK media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly found RT to have breached its rules on impartiality and on one occasion found it had broadcast “materially misleading” content.[3][4][5] On 18 March 2022, Ofcom cancelled RT’s UK broadcasting licence “with immediate effect” after concluding the outlet was not “fit and proper” or a “responsible broadcaster”’(Wikipedia). The unconscious irony is staggering.

7 https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2022/03/13/678482/Video-sharing-giants-delete-documentary-Ukrainian-revolution

8Six years of his broadcasts for On Contact and Russia Today were removed from Youtube, prompting him to set up on Substack.

9For many years the darling of the western Left.

10 https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/world-int/24744-the-tragic-end-of-gonzalo-lira-a-voice-silenced-in-ukraine.html

11 https://cpj.org/2024/08/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict

References & Sources

59 news organisations protest ‘Israeli’ slaughter of journalists in Palestine: https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/media-groups-urge-eu-to-sanction–israel—suspend-treaty

Thoughtful piece on bias in reporting the Ukraine War: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/8/4/western-media-and-the-war-on-truth-in

Ukrainian state censorship on war reporting: https://theintercept.com/2023/06/22/ukraine-war-journalists-press-credentials/

French authorities’ arrest of Telegram founder: https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/french-police-custody-extended-after-arrest-of-telegram-chief-executive-durov-1665708.html

PICKETING THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY IN DUBLIN

On August 23, 2024August 25, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Middle East, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Popular Resistance1 Comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

The Palestinian Authority had a small protest against it in Dublin on the afternoon of Friday 23rd August 2024. This seems to be the first protest that has taken place outside the Palestinian Embassy at 66 Lower Leeson Street.

It would perhaps have been the first protest against the PA in Ireland, were it not for the Palestinian solidarity activists who attempted to convey the Palestinian reality in contrast to the Ambassador’s speech at a public meeting in Belfast in February, before being evicted by Sinn Féin supporters.

Palestinian solidarity activists protesting the Palestinian Authority and Embassy?

At first sight that seems bizarre but as some solidarity activists and most people of Middle Eastern origin know, the PA is not only widely considered unrepresentative and corrupt – and in fact has not held elections since 2006 – but also represses protests in the West Bank against ‘Israel’.

However, the Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign says that its main purpose in calling the protest was to raise awareness of the harm the PA is doing to the Palestinian Resistance, in arresting Resistance fighters and disrupting resistance defence against ‘Israeli’ army incursions.

*Photo of placard being displayed outside the Palestine Embassy today.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

The IAIC’s leaflet handed out at the event points out that the PA’s security force shot and wounded and even killed Resistance fighters, also attempting to enter hospital in force to arrest fighters on two occasions recently, their attempts being frustrated by large mobilisations.

Could a picket on the Palestinian Authority and its Embassy be considered divisive? “Not with justification,” replied an IAIC spokesperson. “It’s the actions of the PA that are divisive. We are supporting the broad resistance there, not one faction or another.”

He points out – as did their leaflet – that 14 Resistance factions including Fatah met in Beijing recently and agreed that the Palestinians have a right to resist, including with weapons and called for unity of all the resistance organisations. “The PA is acting against that unity”, he said.

But why is it that the IAIC called this protest and not one of the Palestinian solidarity organisations? “You’d need to ask them that,” says the spokesperson. “We regularly fly a Palestinian flag on our anti-internment in Ireland pickets; the PA was overdue to be done but nobody else was doing it.”

The IAIC was founded a decade ago to raise awareness about ongoing internment of Irish Republican activists by revoking ex-prisoners’ licence and through refusal of bail by special no-jury courts. In those cases it can take two years for a case to come to trial.

However the IAIC has organised or participated in other events also, such as those around framed prisoners like the Craigavon Two in the Six Counties and the Munir family in England. It has also called two of its pickets since October 2024 to specifically highlight Palestinian prisoners.

Will the group be regularly picketing the Palestinian Authority now? “Probably not. It’s not what we were set up for but we felt the ice needed breaking on this. Others need to step forward now,” replied their spokesperson, though signalling that they would support others in doing it.

*Photo of copy of the leaflet being distributed outside the Palestine Embassy today.* (Photo: *R.Breeze*)

It is probable that a representative of the PA will be welcomed soon by the Irish Government as part of its recognition of the ‘Palestinian State’. One wonders how this reception of a corrupt and Occupation-collusive organisation will be mediated in the Palestinian solidarity sector in Ireland.

The Governments of the EU, including Ireland’s, formally recognise the PA but not only that – so does Sinn Féin in Ireland, EH Bildu in the Basque Country and Esquerra Republicana in Catalonia. This corresponds across the board also to support for ‘the Two-State Solution’ (sic).

What that entails is allocating the Palestinians less than 20% of their homeland weaving around illegal zionist settlements, with least water and some of the worst land, under the permanent watchtowers and guns of their genocidal neighbour.

Organisations and individuals within the broad Palestinian solidarity movement will need to decide exactly what their solidarity with Palestine actually means, especially for the Palestinians themselves.

End.

Reference

Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign: https://www.facebook.com/p/Ireland-Anti-Internment-Campaign-100063166633467/

CHECKPOINTS OF HUMILIATION AND DEATH

On August 18, 2024August 18, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn City Planning, Current Affairs Comment, Human Rights, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Most people in the Western world will have experienced being stopped at a checkpoint, usually feeling irritated at the delay to their journey, commonly afraid only if driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Or curious perhaps – what is this stop about? In many parts of the world however, apprehension or fear are the normal emotions for drivers approaching a checkpoint. The mind wonders: Might I be arrested, beaten, robbed, raped, killed?

For people in a country invaded and occupied, those are rational fears; the people staffing the checkpoints are occupying soldiers or police; or perhaps auxiliaries, locals working for the occupation, perhaps from a different ethnic group. Which can sometimes be worse.

Many Palestinians have been arrested at checkpoints and certainly some have been killed there, while arrest does not mean one will not be killed anyway, or not be used as a human shield under threat of death, or even killed despite doing what their captors asked.

In those situations there are other negative experiences not necessarily including physical harm: humiliation, harassment, the display of power imbalance in how people are treated, delayed, mocked, insulted. An everyday experience for Palestinians passing through IOF checkpoints.

*A busy checkpoint, the Palestinians packed worse than cattle.* (Photo source: *Internet*)

It was so also for many people going through British Army and colonial police checkpoints in the occupied Six Counties of Ireland. Cars with Irish registration plates might be held up for half an hour or longer. Or people who answered that their destination was Derry, instead of “Londonderry” (sic).

People have had their children upset by searches, cuddly toys ripped open, intimate adult clothing in luggage inspected, been body-searched, intimidated by loaded weapons pointed at them and, if known as activists, or even related to activists, been threatened with murder.

All of this happens to Palestinians at checkpoints where Israelis can pass through, hardly stopping. And there are LOTS of checkpoints throughout the West Bank or on the way into “Israel” (i.e. the lands seized and occupied by the Zionists since 1948).

*Map of established Occupation checkpoints in the West Bank, illegally occupied according to the UN. Temporary checkpoints in addition are often established*. (Source: *Internet*)

The guards on checkpoints are often bored or irritated and take out their feelings on those trying to pass through. But the oppressing power wants that to happen: the checkpoints are part of the control structure, physical and mental in effect.

The structural effects and attitudes of the checkpoint guards affect Palestinians travelling to and from their jobs inside ‘Israel’ in addition to Palestinians travelling between one place and another in the occupied lands outside official ‘Israel’.

Those journeys can be for medical treatment (including emergencies), to work or apply for work, to school or university, shopping, to visit friends or relatives, to attend weddings, births, funerals, to support the elderly or disabled, to assist in community work, to take a break, attend festivals …

Apart from anything else, for the Palestinians queuing it may mean a long time in stifling heat in close proximity to other bodies, without water or with a limited supply, no access to a toilet, possibly in direct sun or, in winter, exposed to cold wind and rain …

*An Occupation soldier at a pedestrian checkpoint examines the IDs of Palestinian children accompanied by an adult for their protection.* (Source: *Internet*)

VULNERABLE

Temporary checkpoints however are also vulnerable. A soldier or policeman approaching a vehicle or even pedestrians on foot has only his body armour and firearm standing between him and attack, even if having done this four hours a day for weeks without a single misadventure.

Because one day, just that once, it might be different.

In the past, a Palestinian might blow himself up at a checkpoint. More recently another who’d had enough drove his car through a checkpoint at speed, fatally wounding one of the guards and then shot another. On another occasion, a Palestinian seriously injured two guards by stabbing them.

*A long line of Palestinian vehicles await clearance to proceed through IOF checkpoint* (Photo sourced: *ARU*)

Now, more and more frequently, IOF checkpoints are coming under fire. An incident might last no more than a minutes or two but how long does it take a bullet to travel and enter a body? And even without killing or wounding the body, what is the affect on the mind to feel like a stationary target?

These might seem easy operations but no armed action against the Zionist state is free from danger, especially with IOF drones to record or even fire at Palestinian fighters, to say nothing of artillery shells, bombs and missiles. Success rate in killed or injured IOF in such operations tends to be low.

But their psychological effects are quite significant and wars are not fought just by and on bodies; they are fought by and on minds too. The checkpoints, instruments and symbols of power and oppression have become vulnerable and targets … like the repressive forces staffing them.

End.

*A Palestinian youth being arrested by Occupation soldiers at a checkpoint.* (Photo cred: *Zain JAAFAR / AFP*)

SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION

2023 report on obstacles to movement in Palestine: https://www.ochaopt.org/2023-movement

June 2024 article about military checkpoints in Palestine: https://www.btselem.org/freedom_of_movement/checkpoints_and_forbidden_roads

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240209-israeli-checkpoints-paralyse-west-bank-life-as-gaza-war-rages
Checkpoints as deathtraps: https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/israeli-checkpoints-have-become-death-traps-occupied

THREAT AND COUNTER THREAT 1: ISRAEL-LEBANON

On August 13, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Israeli Zionism, Massacres, Middle East, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 8 mins.)

Over recent months threats have been exchanged between ‘Israeli’ leaders and Hezbollah in Lebanon and also between leaders of Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The former reached its hottest pitch recently and seemed to be heralding open war.

Hezbollah and ‘Israel’

Hezbollah is an Islamist anti-imperialist resistance organisation of an estimated 50-100,000 trained fighters¹ and has been characterised, in numbers and equipment, as “a medium-sized army”. Its artillery units have been firing into ‘Israeli’-occupied territory since October 8^th last year.

The resistance organisation has taken action in solidarity with the Palestinians facing genocide and daily massacres and has vowed to continue it until the ‘Israeli’ Occupation Force ceases its attacks on the Palestinians.

Vast areas of Israeli settlements have been temporarily abandoned by settlers (or permanently by at least 60) as a result,² the genocidal state accommodating former residents in camps and hotels, while the IOF occupies some buildings in the regions, enduring constant Hezbollah bombardments.

*IOF base hit by Hezbollah strike during during the current conflict.* (Photo source: *Internet*)

As the genocidal assault continues, Hezbolah has begun to shell settlements which it had previously excluded from its regular bombardment. In addition, the organisation has been repeatedly hitting IOF surveillance equipment and parts of the ‘Iron Dome’ air defence system.

One might say that the ‘Israeli’ army was responsible for the creation of Hezbollah; the organisation came into existence fighting the IOF’s occupation of Lebanon and its facilitation of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp by its Christian Phalangist allies.³

Hezbollah fought the IOF occupation of Lebanon in 2000 and the re-invasion in 2006, forcing the settler state to recall its army with substantial losses. They were the first campaign defeats inflicted on the IOF since its creation.

*Hezbollah stages a military parade in Beirut, Lebanon in April 2024*
(Image credit: *AP Photo/Hussein Malla/Alamy*)

Threats

Recently Yoav Gallant, the Occupation’s Minister of Defence (sic) threatened Hezbollah with war and claimed that it would be “quick, surprising and decisive”, also that they could shift the focus of their war from Gaza to Hezbollah in an instant.

Yoav Gallant, ‘Israeli’ Minister for Defence (sic), meeting some IOF personnel. The Purple beret is one of the signature uniforms of the Givati Brigade (84th), one of the five infantry brigades of the IOF and is one of the two infantry brigades under the Southern Command. (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

Certainly the most nazi part of Netanyahu’s fascist coalition threatens to resign unless the IOF attacks Hezbollah; it’s been speculated for some time that ‘Bibi’ himself would like that to draw the USA into it and as a distraction from his failed war against the Palestinian resistance.⁴

But it was almost certainly empty bluster from Gallant, to which Hezbollah replied, in case he were serious, that while the IOF could of course cause damage in Lebanon, that Hezbollah’s damage to the ‘Israeli’ state’s military bases and civilian infrastructure would be much greater.

Had Gallant been talking about aerial bombardment only there could have been some reality in his threat — but a land invasion? Having to cross the buffer zone they themselves created,⁵ meanwhile under fire from Hezbollah’s missiles? And how many undamaged tanks does the IOF have left?⁶

And then fighting Hezbollah on the ground? Gallant’s words might also have been bravado in the face of the shock settler society received with Hezbollah’s publication the day previously of the photographs of ‘Israeli’ military and civilian infrastructure taken by undetected drone.

Last Saturday evening, Hezbollah published more photos from a new undetected “flight of the hoopoe”⁷ which must have given the Israeli ruling class even more pause, this one picking out military targets including its “secure” air force base and naming commanding officers.

Indeed, Shin Bet⁸ was recently reported shocked to find that Hamas has an extensive database of IOF personnel at all ranks, including combat history and current addresses; they tracked the IOF commander of the Al Shifa Hospital massacre,⁹ field-executing him two months later.

Hezbollah published the material as a warning (and also to coincide with butcher Netanyahu’s visit to address the USA’s Congress in the Capitol, Washington DC). “If we can photograph it, we can hit it” Hezbollah said and it is known that their missiles can reach any part of the ‘Israeli’ state.

As this goes to publication we read that two Hezbollah M90 missiles were targeted at ‘Tel Aviv’. Though apparently intercepted it will be unsettling for the regime to say the least to learn that the missiles were launched from an area of proximity to a concentration of IOF vehicles invading the Gaza strip.

Recently, ‘Israeli’ threats escalated following an explosion which killed 12 children playing football in the ‘Israeli’-occupied Syrian Golan. In shocking hypocrisy considering the massacres of thousands of Palestinian children, Israeli and US representatives went into paroxysms of rage.

Aside from patently untrue claims that the victims were “Israeli children”,¹⁰ Hezbollah has also denied responsibility; it’s much more likely that the explosion was an accidental IOF Iron Dome missile strike, given the haste with which the missile remains were rushed off-site (and out of sight) by the IOF.¹¹

But with the ‘casus belli’ established, real or not, on Tuesday the IOF sent an explosive drone on an apparently assassination attempt to a southern part of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, killing a woman and two children, injuring 68 and perhaps more inside the collapsed building.

The strike also killed Fuad Shukr, leader of Hezbollah military wing, veteran of the resistance in Lebanon to the IOF invasions and until now, sole survivor of the leadership of those days, all killed in battle or in assassination.

Hezbollah at the very least will continue its bombardment and may feel it necessary to hit some part of “Tel Aviv”. Then the USA and the UK may step in. Meanwhile the Islamist Resistance in Iraq has recommenced its attacks on US bases there, Yemen’s return serve is awaited …

And Iran is in the game, inevitably bound to respond after ‘Israel’s’ assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas and chief ceasefire/ peace negotiator for the Palestinians, who was in Tehran to speak at the inauguration of the new President of Iran..

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Many with battle experience rather than killing civilians, like most of the IOF. Hezbollah’s leader claimed 100,000 fighters in Lebanon three years ago while a western agency puts the figure at 50,000. However the genocide in Palestine and the response of Hezbollah, combined with punitive ‘Israeli’ bombing and assassinations, is likely to have brought many more recruits to the organisation. It can also call on its fighters who are in Syria helping to defending the country from ISIS and US proxies.

2 https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/22/724134/62,000-Israeli-settlers-flee-northern-occupied-lands-out-of-fear-of-Hezbollah-strikes–Report

3 16–18 September 1982, killing of between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias.

4Netanyahu has his personal reasons too; the minute the war is over he will face his postponed trial for corruption.

5By pulling back from their borders to make it more difficult for Hezbollah to hit them, ironically.

6From Israeli analysis sources it seems that not only does the IOF not have the necessary tanks (admitted to 500 damaged) or soldiers but even the munitions for a real war against an opposing army (see short discussion on this and the source in Electronic Intifada recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loHMeAfmnxY)

7The name Hezbollah gave the drone – the hoopoe is the national bird of Palestine.

8‘Israeli’ intelligence service.

9 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hnsJ9G_fdOY

10All of the children were of Syrian Druze families in a community in which around 90% have refused to accept citizenship in the state of their armed occupiers, holding on instead to Druze and Arab Syrian identity.

11Israeli Ministers were denounced on their visits to the site with cries translating as “child-killers” and demands they “Get out! Leave!”, Netanyahu having to leave within 15 minutes of his arrival.

SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/war-with-hezbollah-will-be-quick-surprising-and-decisive-israeli-defense-minister/3278153

Hezbollah (a somewhat biased history): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah

THOUSANDS MARCH THROUGH DUBLIN CITY CENTRE IN SUPPORT OF PALESTINE

On August 5, 2024August 5, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Genocide, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Ireland, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 3 mins. Note: Apologies for delay in publishing this report)

On Saturday 20^th June the Irish people, despite their Governments once again marched in a national demonstration to show the Irish majority solidarity with Palestine and horror at their continuing genocide by the ‘Israeli’ armed forces.

The march had been convened by the long-standing Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign which has branches across Ireland from Cork to Donegal, including in some parts of the British colony (where however the Loyalists are anti-Palestinian).¹

*Mothers Against Genocide group in Dawson St. (around corner from Molesworth St.) evoking individual children murdered by ‘Israel’. (Photo: D.Breatnach)*

*Dublin community group that holds Thursday evening vigils in four areas of North Dublin.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The assassinations of resistance leaders were still to come² but it had been business as usual in Palestine with daily massacres of civilians by the ‘Israeli’ Occupation forces, ongoing starvation, destroyed health service, impending epidemics, prisoners released as ghosts of their former selves.

Also IOF raids and kidnappings³ in the West Bank, at times with Palestinian Authority⁴ collusion in arrests of activists, confiscation or destruction of Resistance weapons …

To all this the Palestinians in general have responded by helping one another trying to survive, digging people out of bombed rubble, documenting atrocities, burying their dead, trying to feed their children and elderly …

And their Resistance in all factions (and none) threw stones, fired bullets, launched anti-tank rockets, mortars, missiles and blew up bombs against Occupation armour and soldiers. And of course, contributed new names to the long list of martyred resistance fighters and commanders.

The ECJ,⁵ to howls of protest from the regime had pronounced its verdict that Israel was indeed, as has long been evident, guilty of practising apartheid against the Palestinians. However not one state ceased giving political or financial cover to the Occupation or supplying it with arms as a result.

*Irish Healthcare Workers for Palestine*. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

IPSC Police?

Only a few Irish Tricolours were displayed on the march which is visually a political mistake, as I’ve observed earlier and the organisers should state that such are welcome. Not one Starry Plough flag, that of socialist Republicans, could be seen either, despite no doubt there being many such participating.

Irish language placards and banners have been getting rarer, despite a previous welcome upsurge upon which I’ve commented in the past. However there were some to be seen, including a number of Saoirse Don Phalaistín flags and the banner of a Newry group, from Co. Down, under British occupation.

As they filled Molesworth Street towards the IPSC stage and police barriers at the end, facing the Leinster House Irish Parliament building, some marchers already began to leave, having heard speeches before and perhaps heading for their transport back to their earlier points of departure.

The company that erects crowd barriers were ready to install them to cut off a section of Molesworth Street at the intersection of narrow lanes and the Gardaí wanted to cram the crowd in beyond the barriers. IPSC stewards began to usher marchers further into Molesworth street.

One approached a group of marchers telling them what the police wanted to which one of the group replied: “I don’t give a f..k what the police want!” and after the steward’s persistence, accused him of doing the job of the police.

The IPSC stewards have helped the police pack marchers into the stretch of Molesworth Street beyond the intersection (and incidentally leaving any demonstrating in Dawson Street cut off from the main group). (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Aside from the rough language, what were the IPSC stewards doing passing on police orders?

People in the group said that the IPSC stewards have done this before and that furthermore there was no important-through way being cleared,⁶ the exercise serving no real purpose other than getting the public used to being corralled and that at the least the police should do their own job.

The main purpose of stewards is to keep the march moving and safely from traffic. The route has been agreed beforehand by the IPSC with the Gardaí which is not a legal requirement in Ireland. Even in that case the stewards should keep a strict separation in functions from the police.

The IPSC does an important job, publishing information and organising events, especially nationally but back in October delayed in even calling for the Zionist Ambassador’s expulsion. Some other groups also organise events and it appears that the IPSC supports some and not others.

*Young Palestinian women leading the slogans call-out*. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Going forward it seems that the solidarity movement, including of course the IPSC, will need to take into account their meagre effect on the Irish Government, not to speak of upon the genocidal state itself and on its supporting states in the West, in particular the USA, Germany, UK …

Such recognition will call for escalation, for direct action, for different kinds of solidarity action … whether some organisations want to participate or not.

*Some trade union banners on the march (though the unions do little to mobilise support, much less take action against ‘Israeli’ products etc.).* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Front of the march turning into College Street. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

FOOTNOTES

1This could be because they see themselves as ‘British’ settlers, while the ‘Israelis’ are European settlers too but is more likely a knee-jerk reaction to the Palestine solidarity exhibited by Irish nationalists (something like “If they’re for them, we must be against them”.

2Assassinations of leaders of Hamas, Hezbolah and senior officers of Islamic Resistance Iraq.

3The IOF and the Zionist State may call them “arrests” or “detentions” but typically they are random or working off a list without warrants or due process. Former prisoners are re-arrested constantly; family of ‘wanted’ individuals are detained in order to pressure the ‘wanted’ to give themselves up. Typically the detained are served ‘administrative detention’ orders, jailing them for months without trial or evidence. Prisoners are underfed, overcrowded, beaten by guards, have dogs set upon them and medically neglected.

4Unelected, undemocratic, corrupt and zionist-colluding body financed by some Western powers and some colluding Arab states.

5 https://palestinecampaign.org/icj-ruling-finds-israel-guilty-of-unlawful-occupation-and-apartheid/

6Furthermore, with no side-streets available in that section beyond the intersection, the police could close that west end of the street should they wish to, ‘kettling’ all the demonstrators between two Garda barriers.

Great Leaders Fall

On August 1, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Assassination, Current Affairs Comment, Imperialism, Journalism, Middle East, National Liberation, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, Zionism1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 5 mins.)

A number of great leaders of Arab resistance to imperialism and zionism have fallen in the last few days. “Those who live by the sword …”, the wise will comment. But they did not die by the sword but rather by long-range missile assassination.

Still, we can take the comment as a metaphor, that those who live by violence die by violence. But do they? Has Genocide Joe Biden died by violence? Sunak? Von der Leyen? Scholz and Merkel? Macron? Netanyahu, Gallant, Smotrich? No, it is clearly not a general rule.

But revolutionary fighters, commanders and leaders – they are killed, again and again. Fighters who become commanders are particularly targeted and, in the Middle East for sure, so are their spouses, their children, their parents … This is the way of Mossad and the IOF but also of the US and UK.

The SAS and MRF units of the British Army did that in the 30 Years’ War in the occupied Six Counties too. Assassinations of leaders are intended to disrupt the revolutionary organisation and demoralise the Resistance.

Sometimes, the intention is to have a revolutionary leader replaced by a traitor or someone who is ideologically pliable but often too the fallen are replaced by others as dedicated and competent, if not more so.

The IOF are accomplished assassins of individuals, also killers of civilians, just not very good at combating armed resistance, particularly in the absence of air cover..

But why shouldn’t revolutionary leaders be felled – don’t they send others out to kill or be killed? Certainly they do and all Arab resistance movement commanders know that they risk assassination, many of the commanders and fighters writing their wills while in active service.

However, visit imperialist war memorials listing the names and ranks of the fallen in war and see how many names of their armies’ generals can be found there. Not many, that’s for sure.

Haniyeh was the chief Resistance representative in the Gaza ceasefire/ peace talks. Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani of Qatar, which is mediating the talks, tweeted: “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on other side?”¹

Two revolutionary leaders who fell to assassination so recently were Sayyed Fouad Shukr of Hezbollah in a suburb of Beirut and Ismail Haniye of Hamas in the Iranian capital, Tehran. Each organisation has issued statements that they will not be stopped and that they will claim revenge.

In another assassination strike on Tuesday in Iraq, admitted by the USA, Khateb Hezbollah suffered the loss of martyred leader Abu Hassan Al-Maliki and martyred fighters Ali Al-Moussawi, Hassan Al-Saadi and Hussein Karim Al-Daraji,² bringing huge crowds out in protest there.

The Iraqi Islamic resistance had begun shelling US Army bases there recently, partly in frustration at the lack of any move to leave the country despite having indicated they would but partly also no doubt in frustration at not contributing to the united effort in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Iran declared furthermore that since the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh took place on their national territory that the obligation of response falls upon them. One imagines that another strike on somewhere in Israel will be considered necessary though the precise target is unknown.

Declarations of condolence, defiance and continuity were also issued by resistance factions in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, as well as by the leaderships of Yemen and Tunisia. A general strike was called in the West Bank and marches of defiance and solidarity held in a number of countries.

Confrontations with settlers and with the Occupation army have been taking place in towns across the West Bank and the war in Gaza continues, more or less as normal: daily massacres by the IOF, actions by the Resistance.

‘Collateral damage’

The strikes on the leaders also claimed other lives: six people including three women and two children, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps member Milad Bedi were killed in the Beirut assassination of Fuad Shukr and 78 injured in the collapsed building.³

Along with Haniyeh in Iran died his bodyguard and veteran Palestinian resistance fighter, Wassim Shabu, with no details of other ‘collateral damage’ from there or from Iraq so far.

According to the rules of war agreed among the imperialists, assassination of commanders, even civilian ones in times of war, is justified. ‘Collateral damage’ to a certain degree is also permitted by those rules but how can the bombing of journalists and killing two in Gaza be justified?

They were at the rubble site of Haniyeh’s former home, perhaps reporting on some kind of event marking the assassination, since they cannot attend the equivalent of a wake or a laying out of the body, the funeral to be held in Iran. How was their killing justifiable by any stretch of rules?

Ismail Al-Ghoul and Ramy Al-Reef were the two press men martyred there. Those two deaths bring the number of journalists killed in Palestine (always by the IOF), to 165, the highest number of journalists killed in any conflict since data began to be collected by the CPJ in 1992.⁴

Life of revolutionary leaders

The life stories of the martyred leaders are instructive in themselves. Ismail Haniyeh grew up in a refugee camp in Al-Shati in Gaza, son of a community driven out of their home in Jura in Askelan⁵ in 1948. He graduated with a degree in Arabic Literature from the Gaza University in 1981.

It was in university Haniyeh became politically active, joining the student section of Islamic Bloc (forerunner of Hamas), becoming arrested and detained three times, the final one for three years, after which he was deported to southern Lebanon with other leaders.

Ismail Haniye survived at least four assassination attempts, including in 2003 and in 2006.

Haniyeh led Hamas to victory in the 2006 elections for the legislature of the Palestinian Authority. The Fatah leadership refusing to hand over the administration in Gaza, Hamas removed them in a short struggle,⁶ then Abbas⁷ refused to recognise the election results there or in the West Bank.

The Zionist State followed, as did the Western powers and the siege of Gaza began.

Haniyeh’s granddaughter was killed last November in a bombing on a school. Three of his sons and three grandsons were assassinated in an IOF strike on their car in April and last month, 10 of his family, including his sister, were killed in an IOF bombing.

Sayeed Fuad Shukr 62, also known as Al-Hajj Mohsen, was born in the city of Nabatieh in Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, according to the US government’s Rewards for Justice website, which offered up to $5 million for information on Shukr.

He came to political struggle in the resistance to the IOF invasion and occupation of Lebanon which was the spur to the creation of Hezbollah. Fuad Shukr as a fighter rose through the political and military ranks to the Jihad Council fighting the IOF and its Lebanese proxy.

Sayeed also would have been party to the decision to send Hezbollah fighters to assist the Syrian state resist attacks by NATO forces and their proxies and probably also Turkish.

He was married with children; his daughter wrote pieces in particular about martyrs under a pseudonym but just published a piece about her father under her own name on Resistance News Network (on Telegram).

Dying Gaul statue, 1st Century CE, probably Roman sculpture. By his neck ornament, the Gaul appears to be a warrior of high rank. The Gauls were a Celtic culture inhabiting most of modern-day France, Switzerland and parts of Italy; after many wars they were crushed by the Roman Empire. (Source image: *Internet*)

Great leaders

I commented that they were great leaders. By all accounts they were. They were Muslim revolutionaries and I am an atheist but more to the point their religious belief was an important part of their politico-social ideology, to which my own secular revolutionary ideology is opposed.

But they were revolutionaries non the less, courageously leading their people in struggle against their oppressors, who are very powerful enemies. They had emotion, which they let out in speech. In planning and in response to events however, they thought things through before acting.

Ismail Haniye probably underestimated the extent – in length of time and numbers of dead, in starvation and destruction of all infrastructure — of the ‘Israeli’ genocidal war after October 7^th.⁸ That does not mean however that the breakout and attack was not necessary.

But the resistance was led, day after day, using the tunnels that had been dug through the years of preparation and the weapons researched, developed and produced over that time. In the truce/ ceasefire negotiations, the leadership stuck to the necessary minimum, which must’ve been hard.

Great fighters of the rank and file fall and are constantly being replaced and multiplied. Thousands of civilians have been killed, disabled and traumatised, yet the Palestinian population will recover and rebuild. Great leaders have fallen – let us hope their replacements will be great too.

End.

Footnotes

1 https://www.axios.com/2024/07/31/hamas-ismail-haniyeh-killed-iran Just one more proof, in addition to going back on agreements, adding new requirements etc showing that Netanyahu never had any intention of negotiating a genuine ceasefire, exchange of prisoners and withdrawal from Gaza and the Rafah Gate to allow humanitarian aid to enter. Indeed he often said that his chief aim was wiping out Hamas and would not permit self-governance in Gaza – it was only a few of his officials and the US administration which kept pretending otherwise.

2 https://t.me/PalestineResist/50870

3 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/hamas-chief-ismail-haniyeh-killed-iran-hamas-says-statement-2024-07-31

4Committee to Protect Journalists https://cpj.org/

5Now Zionist settler district ‘Ashkelon’.

6This is the reality usually disguised in the western mass media by phrases like “Hamas seized power in Gaza” or “Hamas took control in Gaza”.

7Mahmoud, Fatah’s boss of the PA, widely known for personal corruption and nepotism and also for collusion with the Zionist Occupation.

8Even the most pessimistic could hardly have expected the extent of the genocide or the extent of the collusion or forbearance of the West and most of the Arab states.

Sources

Sayyed Fouad Shukr (but including rubbish about the explosion killing children in the Golan): https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/31/who-isfuad-shukr

Iraq assassinations: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240731-us-air-strike-in-iraq-as-regional-tensions-worsen/

HEZBOLLAH DRONE TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES SHOCK ‘ISRAELI’ SECURITY

On July 29, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Genocide, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, ZionismLeave a comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 4 mins.)

The ability of enemy drones to evade detection and even attack, reaching into the heart of the ‘Israeli’ state’s territory, both to photograph and, in the case of the Jaffa (‘Haifa’) town and ‘Eilat’ port to strike, have shocked the state’s military.

They have shocked settler society too. Hadashot Bazman¹ reported: “Hezbollah’s drones do not need a visa, and they are controlled remotely via cameras with an operator in the control room. What you do not know will not kill you now …²

“they are telling us: ‘We are here, inside you, planning, and capable of delivering harsh strikes’.” ‘Israeli’ daily newspaper Maariv added: “The Air Force has been asleep at the wheel for years.” ³

‘The sarcasm reached the point where one person wrote: “I lost a black leather wallet at Haifa (sic) Port; we hope Hezbollah will locate it accurately and professionally.”⁴

The hit in Jaffa was by Ansar Allah, exploding a drone near what was the former main US Embassy building (before its internationally illegal relocation to Jerusalem)⁵; the other was claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. But the drones hitting them almost daily are from Hezbollah.

Why the shock? It’s because they have come to believe in their security, their own racist European settler propaganda of innate superiority, instead of recognising the real source of their domination over the indigenous: the financial, military and political support of the Western powers.

With constant propaganda through western mass media, that image of the westernised (‘civilised’) ‘Israelis’ has permeated throughout the west, even infecting many who detest the Occupation’s genocidal actions.

Imagine the reaction as we explain years of Hezbollah’s drone development, testing, production, more testing … “We thought they got their weapons from Iran.⁶ Wait a minute! You’re talking engineers, designers, labs, test crews … Actual factories, assembly lines! In an Arab insurgency army?!”

We have been trained to see the ordinary people of the Middle East as underdeveloped industrially and (therefore!) socially, their fighters as religious fanatics. This image is not compatible with decades devoted to research development and production of sophisticated modern weaponry.

And yet, that is the ‘secret’ of the Yemeni success: determination, years of R&D, testing their ability, testing the enemy’s, redesign, more testing, tight security and deceiving the enemy … until the cat is out of the bag, spitting, claws fully extended.⁷

*Hezbollah’s Karar drone*. (Source: *Yemen’s Air Force PDF*)

And yet … and yet … Hezbollah is still showing restraint. Yes, they are targeting the IOF in the occupied lands and, in response to genocidal attacks on Palestinians, also some of the colonial settlements until recently untouched.

They are also hitting and destroying parts of the genocidal state’s surveillance and defence infrastructure, practically on a weekly basis. The “Iron Dome” depends on launching interception missiles and the launchers are being periodically hit by Hezbollah too.

*‘Iron Dome’ launcher of interception missiles with members of the IOF in attendance* (Source: *Yemen’s Air Force PDF*)

And they will continue doing this, they say, until the genocidal attacks on Palestinians cease and international humanitarian aid returns unimpeded (Yemen’s attacks on certain shipping will continue until the same point, as made clear by Ansar Allah).

Hezbollah, like most anti-imperialists, Arab or otherwise, want to see the demise of the genocidal state. But they clearly don’t want all-out war with it at present, with attendant wide-scale destruction of Lebanon by the air forces of the imperialist alliance.

So they have published the results of their surveillance drones flyovers, including most recently of the IOF’s high-security military airport, noting the identity of its commanding officer and also exploded a warning in the centre of the state’s third-largest city.

Published results from the earlier ‘Flight of the Hoopoe’ in June.

THE SHORT, MEDIUM AND LONGER-TERM SIGNIFICANCE

In the short term, the significance of this development is that the settler state is very vulnerable. It must endure Hezbollah’s attacks on its military and its defence systems, knowing that its vulnerability increases steadily.

Scenes from and commentary on the most recent published results of Hezbollah’s undetected drone flight containing detailed aerial film of the IOF’s airbase.

Or attack the source, which Gallant has threatened and Netanyahu desires — for which, as this was being written, they tried to find an excuse in a deadly explosion on children playing football in the occupied Golan, blamed on Hezbollah but for which they’ve denied responsibility.⁸

But it is extremely doubtful that their armed forces now have the necessary numbers of armour or troops to attack Lebanon, having suffered so many damaged or destroyed of the first and dead or severely injured of the second, inflicted by the lower-tech fighters of the Palestinian Resistance.

In the short-to-medium term, all the allies of the Palestinians in the Middle East draw encouragement in their own contention with the ‘Israeli’ state and with its imperialist supporters and suppliers, while some other states reconsider their alliance with what looks increasingly like a loser.

There is no question but that in recent decades the role of drones in wars between states has been significant but also in asymmetrical conflicts against resistance fighters, such as that of the ‘Israeli’ state against the Palestinians, both against fighters and more commonly against unarmed civilians.

From now on, insurgency movements will have to organise not only to neutralise the adverse effects of drones in their adversaries’ hands but also to maximise the numbers and efficiency of their own against their enemies’ troops, armaments and battle HQs, production and administrative centres.

The term “drone” is used to describe UACVs (unmanned aerial combat vehicle) but versions operating on the ground, on and under sea have also been developed.

Sea versions like an unmanned boat exploding on contact or from radio signal have been used by Yemen recently. In the NATO proxy Ukraine war, the latter has also deployed them against Russian assets. The development of multi-environment military drones cannot be far away.

Drones can also observe, record, hunt and attack through detection of infra-red imaging, attacking human fighters of either side at night or in heavy fog, rain or snow – as long as the drones can fly.

In future, killer combat drones may hunt not only by detecting infra-red light and carbon dioxide emission,⁹ gun oil odour, presence of ammonia etc but even of pheromones, able to distinguish between sexually active males and females.

Of course, the development of drones could focus on means to find survivors (or recover bodies) in collapsed mines or buildings (something the Palestinians could make great use of due to IOF bombing), locate missing persons etc, instead of for observing people in order to kill them.

Well … not much chance of that, is there?

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Middle East commentator.

2Hezbollah_Air_Force.pdf from Resistance News Network (see Sources).

3Ibid.

4Ibid.

5Under Trump’s previous Presidency but not withdrawn under Biden’s.

6Well Iran might be viewed as ‘mad Arabs’ (they’re not even Arabs, for the most part) but at least it’s a state, not an insurgent army. In fact, it appears to be the case that Hezbollah have not only developed their own drone-building capacity but contributed to Iran’s.

7Or one of the cats, anyway; Hezbollah says it has more surprises in store and it’s hard not to believe them.

8The western mass media has recorded Hezbollah’s denial of responsibility for the explosion perfunctorily while giving much space to ‘Israeli’ and US accusations against the organisation. This should be bizarre, given Hezbollah’s record of accuracy in missile firing and in statements, compared with an ‘Israeli’ history of blatant and monstrous lies (as recently as by Netanyahu in his address to the US Congress in Washington) … but has sadly become routine.

9One of the ways in which female mosquitoes locate their prey from which to suck blood.

PALESTINE AUTHORITY PREVENTED FROM ARRESTING RESISTANCE FIGHTER IN HOSPITAL

On July 26, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Middle East, National Liberation, Palestine, Political Analysis, Political Prisoners, Popular Resistance, Uncategorized2 Comments

Clive Sulish

(Reading time: 3 mins.)

Conflict with security forces of the Palestinian Authority broke out in Tulkarm city in the West Bank today as they tried to seize Palestinian Resistance commander Abu Sujaa (Mohamed Jaber), who was receiving treatment in Thabet Thabet Hospital.

According to reports the PA fired tear gas and used pepper spray inside the Hospital grounds, also striking with batons at protesters including women. Shots were fired at the PA’s HQ and protesters are calling the PA “traitors” and “collaborators”.

After a tense stand-off the PA forces eventually had to leave empty-handed.

Abu Sujaa is a commander of the Tulkarm Brigade, Soraya Al-Quds (Islamic Jihad), one of the main organisations of the Resistance. It is reported that he was injured while handling explosives and taken to hospital; when the PA learned of his presence there they sent forces to capture him.

The arrest attempt by the PA and treatment of protesters has been condemned Soraya Al-Quds and by a number of other Palestinian Resistance organisations including the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade coalition, Mujahadeen Movement, PFLP, Hamas and Popular Resistance Committees.

A statement also condemning the PA’s action by students at Birzeit University was signed off by the student movements of Hamas, PFLP, DFLP, PPSF, and PPP.

The point was also made that Abdul Nasser, one of the own PA’s employees, a security officer in uniform, was filmed executed by the IOF recently in cold blood in front of their headquarters in Tubas “without any action, condemnation, or denunciation” by the PA’s leaders.

Abu Sujaa is far from being the first Palestinian Resistance fighter targeted by the PA which holds many prisoners but has also killed fighters, including Ahmed Abu Al-Ful in early May¹ and Motasim Al-Arif a month later, on that occasion also while trying to capture Abu Shujaa.²

Two Palestinian civil society activists recently went on hunger strike in protest at their detention by the PA, Fakri Jaradat being released after a week of hunger strike (but 16 days detention) but Ghassan Al-Saadi was transferred to Al-Razi Hospital in Jenin in deteriorated health condition.

This evening, according to local sources quoted on Resistance News Network, PA Security Forces stormed the city of Tubas, apparently in order to assassinate the resistance fighter Omar Meselmani who is wanted by the Occupation, since they shot at him directly.

Palestinian unity?

The Palestinian representative bodies recognised internationally are the PA and the PLO,³ both dominated by the Fatah leadership. The latter were represented at the Beijing Palestinian Unity conference last weekend at which all 14 factions agreed on the need for a unity government.

The PLO excludes Islamist organisations from membership, though both the PFLP and the DFLP delegates stated at the conference that they wished to admit those resistance organisations to the PLO, no such decision was recorded (presumably blocked by Fatah) in the conference decisions.

One might have thought that in the circumstances of the Beijing Agreement, the PA would be keeping a low profile or at least certainly steering clear of conflict with Resistance organisations. On the contrary however, the PA seems to be intent on exacerbating divisions.

Islamic Jihad, possibly divining the PA’s intentions, has declared it will not be drawn into a civil war with the organisation, despite its actions and collusion with the Occupation. But can that posture be maintained if the PA continues persecuting and even shooting its fighters?

Perhaps the PA is doing its best, in order to avoid its being sidelined and as an aid to the beleaguered Israeli occupation, to ensure that civil war breaks out among the Palestinians.

End.

FOOTNOTES

SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION

In Dramatic Scene – Palestinians Free Fighter Besieged by PA Police in West Bank (VIDEOS)

PA arrests of Resistance fighters and other opponents of the Occupation:

In Dramatic Scene – Palestinians Free Fighter Besieged by PA Police in West Bank (VIDEOS)

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/political-detainees-in-the-palestinian-authority

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority

1 https://x.com/PALMENA_IC/status/1786005323565633947

2(https://t.me/PalestineResist/34391)

3Palestine Liberation Organisation

EXCLUSION OF ISLAMISTS FROM THE PALESTINE LIBERATION ORGANISATION ENDING

On July 23, 2024 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Genocide, Imperialism, Indigenous or Original People, Internationalist Solidarity, Israeli Zionism, Middle East, National Liberation, PalestineLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time article: 5 mins.)

The historic exclusion from the Palestine Liberation Organisation of Islamist resistance organisation is ending. In a conference taking place currently in Beijing, two secular resistance organisations called for the Islamists’ inclusion in the PLO.

That news came earlier in the day from Resistance News Network (on Telegram) and much later, from the same source, the news of an agreement (see Appendix) of all on forming a consensus resistance government – but no mention of opening the PLO to the Islamist groups.

*Participants in the Palestine Resistance Unity Conference in Beijing days ago*. (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

The PLO has been internationally recognised as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people but it was dominated by Arafat’s Fatah, which became a corrupt organisation colluding with the Occupation and with US Imperialism.

This morning some of the published contents of the agreement¹ leaked to the media, were disputed in statements from Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Ihsan Ataya² and Hussam Badran of Hamas,³ in particular in reference to UN resolutions which contained a recognition of the state of ‘Israel’.

Reading between the lines one suspects an attempt to bring in false elements of agreement with elements of collusion with the entity and/or undermining and sabotaging any agreement at all. In any such manoeuvres, due to past behaviour first suspicion must fall on the Fatah leadership.⁴

If no agreement was reached on enlarged PLO membership, then given the statements of the PFLP and the DFLP, one must assume that the Fatah leadership vetoed that decision. In agreeing to a consensus government then one must also suspect the Fatah leadership of playing for time.

The Western Left and the Palestinian Resistance

A decision on opening the PLO has been coming for some time but will not be welcomed by some groups in the West. Islamist resistance organisations hold a number of socio-political ideological positions that are in opposition to the socialist or even secular positions held in Left circles.

*Palestinian militants from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in parade in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on April 29, 2014.* (Photo cred: *Abed Deb /Pacific Press Credit: PACIFIC PRESS/Alamy Live News*)

In those sectors of the Western Left, most support was divided among Fatah, the leading faction in the PLO, or for the Peoples Front for the Liberation of Palestine, its second organisation in size there, with some supporting the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

With regard to the first, the ability of organisations claiming to be revolutionary or even just democratically socialist to support a leadership founding the Palestine Authority as a Vichy-type government run by the corrupt Quisling Abbas has been astonishing and also revolting.

While the PA and Fatah leadership engage in active collusion, a military section of Fatah has broken away and is part of the active armed resistance to the Occupation,⁵ though overshadowed in quantity and effect by the operations of the Islamist groups.

*Two Islamic Jihad fighters* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

Need for Unity but Not a Simple Thing to Achieve

There is clearly a need for a unified resistance in terms of military operations but also with regard to political position. How far is the resistance to go? What are to be its objectives beyond defeating the current genocidal campaign? Who will run the territory and how will that be decided?

And of course, what is the national territory to be claimed: historic Palestine? Or the territory as it stood prior to the 1967 War? Into that question comes the other: a unitary secular state of the whole of Palestine, or 20% of the national territory under sight and guns of the larger Occupation state?

According to reports from Resistance News Network two secular organisations, PFLP and DFLP have already laid out their initial positions and both called for the inclusion in the PLO of the Islamist organisations Hamas and ICJ, along with the formation of an interim unity government.

This is a demand made in the past by Hamas and the ICJ also. Should all 14 organisations participating agree, there will remain a long road ahead of them. The Fatah leadership is wedded to Western imperialism and is likely to face rejection in elections, even more than it did in 2006.

Western imperialism and of course the Israeli settler regime don’t want a united Palestinian national resistance.

The fact is that not only are the Islamist organisations doing most of the fighting against the ‘Israeli’ Occupation’s genocidal campaign but there are more of them and they generally acknowledge the leadership of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who have also been careful to consult them.

It was the latter two that organised and led the October 7^th breakout from the Gaza ‘concentration camp’ into Palestinian territory seized and occupied by the settler regime, though resistance operations immediately afterwards were coordinated by the Joint Operations Room.

Hamas is not only the major leader in terms of military resistance, it is also a political organisation and was the electoral choice of the Palestinian people in the 2006 elections, the result of which was repudiated by the Fatah leadership and by the Western powers.

In addition, while the Palestinian secular Leftists have few external allies, those of the Islamist Palestinian resistance are active and powerful: Hizbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Islamic Resistancein Iraq,⁶ Ansar Allah in Yemen⁷ and the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

All of those with the exception of Iran are in constant action against the ‘Israeli’ Occupation and Iran has shown its capacity to flood ‘Israel’s’ air defence systems and, despite Western allies’ air force operations, to strike three military bases of its choice in occupied territory.

Yemen, in addition to its effective interdiction in three seas of shipping allied to the genocidal entity, last week slipped an explosive drone into Tel Aviv without even setting off alarms. The IOF bombed its oil tanks and electricity generator in revenge but this contest is far from over.

Hizbollah developed missiles capable of striking anywhere inside territory occupied by ‘Israel’ and has displayed detailed footage captured by their undetected drone over ‘Israel’s’ claimed territory comprehensively detailing military, industrial and civilian infrastructure.

In the event of the creation of a genuine national independent Palestinian state, it will not be socialist, at least initially — but will it be secular or Islamic in law? In the case of the latter, what will be the fate of the secular resistance sector?

In 2007 Hamas dealt harshly with Fatah forces in Gaza but that was after months of the Fatah administration refusing to relinquish control in line with the 2006 election results and also, no doubt, in recognition of the PA’s collusion with imperialism and the Occupation.

And will Shia and Sunni sections of the Islamist sector find a long-lasting accommodation? Come to that, will the secular organisations agree with one another? Apart from the collusive role of Fatah, in their statement the DFLP supported a two-State solution which the PFLP does not.

*Mass demonstration of unity of different Palestinian resistance organisations* (Source photo: *Internet*)

These questions will be answered by events yet to come and of course the right to decide on them belongs to the Palestinians. The Left in Palestine and outside will need to find a way to accommodate themselves to the results and continue to oppose imperialism and Zionism.

The defeat of the genocidal state of ‘Israel’ will be a huge boon to humanity, a significant damage to western imperialism (in that also a huge great boon to the world) and a huge achievement of the heroic resistance, armed and unarmed, of the Palestinian people.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1See Appendix

2Head of Arab and International Relations, statement to Al Mayadeen, summarised in Resistance News Network. Excerpt:

3Head of the National Relations Office in the Hamas movement and a member of its political bureau, in press statement summarised in Resistance News Network. Excerpt: Some points that implicitly and explicitly recognize the naming of UN resolutions that include recognition of “israel” have been amended. The Palestinian political leadership must realize that all negotiations with the occupation forces have failed. The guarantee of implementing the clauses of the “Beijing Declaration” lies in the hands of the Palestinians themselves. The dialogue in Beijing took place in two sessions, and after drafting the statement, there were objections to a number of its contents, and our position was clear. The final reading of the statement was supposed to take place before its approval, but due to the limited time, it was based on what the committee drafted. We passed the statement with our implicit reservations to thwart those who wanted to sabotage this meeting.

4The possibility of collusion in such manoeuvres by the DFLP cannot be excluded, given its position (reiterated in its opening statement to the Beijing Conference, as published by RNN) of claiming Palestinian land on the basis of pre-1967 War only, thereby accepting the State of Israel and its occupation of most of Palestine.

5I have not seen a full list of the represented organisations at the Beijing conference and therefore am unable to say whether they were there. They have been mostly fighting the Occupation in the West Bank and two of their field commanders were martyred yesterday in Tulkarem alongside a commander of Hamas forces by an IOF drone strike during the battle there.

6This coalition recently decided to end its truce in attack on US military bases in Iraq as a result of the long delay by the US in carrying out their agreed departure.

7In effect the government of Yemen, though the Western powers recognise only their proxy, a government in exile.

REFERENCES & SOURCES

Number of postings by Resistance News Network (on Telegram platform) yesterday and today.

https://ecfr.eu/special/mapping_palestinian_politics/plo_parties/

https://ecfr.eu/special/mapping_palestinian_politics/introduction_armed_groups/ (RNN gives a more comprehensive list and more detailed explanation but the link is for Telegram only)

APPENDIX

🚨🇵🇸 “The Beijing Declaration to End Palestinian National Division: To unify national efforts to confront aggression and stop the genocide war.”

The following was agreed upon by 14 Palestinian factions at the end of the reconciliation meeting in Beijing, China (https://t.me/PalestineResist/49595) today, including Hamas, PIJ, PFLP, DFLP, and Fatah:

– The Palestinian factions welcome the opinion (https://t.me/PalestineResist/49245) of the International Court of Justice, which confirmed the illegality of presence, occupation, and settlement.

– Continuing to follow up on the implementation of the agreements to end the division that took place with the help of Egypt, Algeria, China, and Russia.

– Commitment to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in Al-Quds in accordance with international resolutions, especially 181 and 2334, and ensuring the right of return.

– We affirm the right of the Palestinian people to resist occupation and end it in accordance with international laws, the UN Charter, and the right of peoples to self-determination.

– To form a temporary national unity government with the consensus of Palestinian factions and by a decision of the president based on the Palestinian Basic Law.

– The formed government exercises its powers and authorities over all Palestinian territories, confirming the unity of the West Bank, Al-Quds, and the Gaza Strip.

– To resist and thwart attempts to displace our people from their homeland, especially from the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Al-Quds.

– Working to lift the barbaric siege on our people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and deliver humanitarian and medial aid without restriction or condition.