New Year Omens

October 2, 2024. Chana Tova... Three-day fast for Orna Shimoni & her friends.

 A new year for the people of Israel, in Israel and other lands. It starts with the first eight young men killed in Lebanon. The first war in Lebanon ended in early October 1982, after five months, with a toll of 368 Israeli soldiers killed - in June 1985, it amounted to 654 killed. In May 2000, when the IDF finally withdrew from Lebanon, it had risen to 1,216.

Total casualties in this first Lebanon war were over 19,000, without counting the 2,000 to 3,000 victims of "Christian" militias in Sabra and Shatila. Among the nineteen thousand, around 2,000 Palestinians, 1,200 Syrians. The PLO had around 15,000 fighters. They were joined by 3,500 "left wing" Murabitun militants, the Communists, and around 30,000 fighters of an alliance between the Communist Party and other factions. With them, there were the shia Amal combatants, 1,500 Pasdaran sent by Iran, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

Orna's son Eyal, died as a soldier in Lebanon, in 1997. He was 21.

The second war of Lebanon, in 2006, lasted one month. 165 Israelis were killed. Along with 1,191 Lebanese citizens (including some 300 fighters).

In August 2006, David Grossman's son, Uri, was killed in Lebanon, on the last day of the war, shortly before the ceasefire came into effect. He was 21.

We don't have specific stories and pictures of other victims among Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, of this endless confrontation. Except for Sabra and Shatila (mid-September 1982). The Christians in Lebanon had been exposed to countless, ruthless attacks from Shia Amal and Palestinian fighters. The Lebanese President, Bachir Gemayel, a Christian, elected on August 23, 1982, was assassinated three weeks after his election, on September 14. His aim was to get all armed Palestinians out of the country, as King Hussein had done in Jordan in September 1970.

The author of this chronicle made the decision, forty years ago, to never enter Lebanon, that  felt like it had become a nest of scorpions, serpents of all kinds, sadly.

You went there with an open mind, like the journalist and writer Jean-Paul Kauffmann, like the sociologist Michel Seurat, and you'd end up in some forsaken underground cell, dead or alive.

A hundred foreigners were kidnapped in Lebanon, from over twenty nations, during the 1982-1992 war. Among 17,000 people "who disappeared after being abducted".

"The theocratic government of Iran played a major role in the kidnappings"

"The kidnappings and prolonged holding of hostages was also attributed to Iranian foreign policy interests, including a desire to extract concessions from the Western countries" 

Lebanon hostage crisis, W.Pedia  -  Hezbollah clearly was behind it all, although it kept denying, "as usual".

October 3, 2024. On the threshold.

There were no qualms of conscience against the Third Reich. And then, against the Islamic State. Germany, Iraq, Syria, paid such a heavy human toll, and we can't remember that anyone, anywhere, objected.

 A brave statement by Coco, published in Charlie Hebdo, on October 2, 2024.

Coco is a French cartoonist, born in 1982, who has done editing and published editorial cartooning in the satirical weekly since 2009. On January 7, 2015, she was on the ground floor of the building where Charlie Hebdo had its offices, and the two assassins "in the name of Allah" forced her to enter the code. Upon which, hidden under a desk, she witnessed the cold-blooded murder of iconic cartoonists Cabu and Wolinski, before the killers entered the second room, to slaughter all who were there, ten out of twelve (among them, the cartoonist Honoré, the psychoanalyst Elsa Cayat, the economist Bernard Maris).

The Algerian Muslim assassins claimed they were part of Al Qaeda in Yemen.

On January 11, 2024, two million people marched in Paris, with 80 world leaders. These Republican Marches, as they were called, "were the first mass movement of their kind since 1944, when Paris was liberated from the Germans at the end of World War II"

Wary as we are of easy, binary amalgams, we can figure some scale of toxicity in the history of world massacres.

Admittedly, the flag with the swastika, and the black flag of the Islamic State, are not flags we'd feel good to live with. Both rank high enough in the hierarchy of mayhem and murder on Earth.

It'd be interesting to contextualize, to establish the toll of the "main" devastating wars since 1974 (a half-century giving a measure of perspectives, without sinking into the faraway past).

We'd start with Viet-Nam (1955-1961-1975) with its toll of 3 million killed; the Pol Pot dictatorship in Cambodia (1976-1981) - a toll of 2 million; the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989) - 2 to 3 million killed; Iran-Iraq (1980-1988) - 1.5 million dead; the Gulf War in Iraq (1990-1991) 300,000 killed in six months; the Rwanda Genocide (1994) - a toll of 600,000 in three months; the Second Afghanistan war (2001-2021) - 200,000; the Second Gulf War in Iraq (2003-2011) - 1 million dead (according to the Opinion Research Business estimate); the Syria civil war (2011-2024) - 600,000 killed; the Yemen civil war (2014-2024) - 400,000 killed; the US-EU war against Russia in Ukraine (2022-2024) - 300,000 killed; the Sudan civil war (2023-2024) - 150,000.

Follow the red thread of these twelve major wars in half a century, from Viet-Nam to Sudan, via Cambodia, Afghanistan twice, Iraq three times, Iran once until recently, Rwanda, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen and Sudan, and you find tides of the most brutal violence between peoples, being financed and equipped (except in Cambodia, Rwanda?) by the main arms manufacturers and exporters worldwide.

You easily find their list on the net, notably with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2024-03/fs_2403_at_2023.pdf

The outcome of these wars is another story altogether. Still, we may surmise they are profitable to some.

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Are there two conflicting sides to the same conundrum ?

One that would be pro-war, admittedly, that we could label "Gantz & Gallant", vs another "pro-peace", represented by Orna Shimoni and the hunger-strikers? Not necessarily. 

Would we stand for one side, against the other ? By no means. Reality is not that binary and exclusive.

There are times when you need a voice for the arms (in the double sense of the word), and a voice for the soul.

Without a clear soul, arms are doomed.

Without power in our arms, the soul is doomed.

Too many keep throwing blames at every paragraph of their speeches.

In the midst of such fires, there is no time for speechifying and manichean games.

Orna's hunger strike and Gallant's decisions so far are not contradictory.

She "simply" has the courage to set a deadline for an end game - around November. With her own life in the scales. Soldiers who fight against Islamic Jihad in Gaza and against Hezbollah in Lebanon do the same - they also want an end to it all. A final, decisive end.

October 4, 2024. Postponed landing.

I should have landed at Ben Gurion Airport around noon. I had my ETA pass and my ticket booked from Athens to Tel Aviv. The Irish company, Ryan Air, cancelled my flight without any explanation or connection to the Lebanon flare-up. Could it be the old anti-Israel sectarian attitude of some Irish Republicans ?

They say the army struck the Palestinian who has waved his blood-covered hand from a window, in Ramallah, in celebration of the atrocious lynching of two young Isreali reservist who had lost their way, made the wrong turn. Vadim Norzhich and Avraham Yossef, both in their early twenties. The two corpses were dragged to Al Manara Square, in celebration, by a transfigured mob. The day was October 12, 2000.

Ten days later, I was in Ramallah, the only one of my kind, after a French journalist had been shot down at a demonstration. That evening, October 22, 2000, I was smoothly abducted by two young men who though I might be a zionist spy. They took me to an unfinished building in a no-man's land, and started interrogating me.

Luck had it that an Arab neighbour of mine sent me an sms about the hens I had then, which he was feeding in my absence. When they knew the story, their behaviour changed (has hens, an Arab friend, can't be bad) and the interrogatory came to an end. These two were secular, and I guess they had not drifted down too far yet.

The October 2000 lynching of Vadim Norzhich & Avraham Yossef reminded me of a similar happening, the lynching to death of two young British corporals, in Belfast, Derek Wood and Robert Howes, on March 19, 1988, by an Irish catholic mob. They too had lost their way, taken the wrong turn. They were in an ordinary car, dressed in civilian clothes, but identified as soldiers.

What relation between a Catholic Irish mob and a Muslim Palestinian mob ?

Catholic, you see. All baptized. In the name of the Lord.

October 5, 2024. Gideon redemption ? What is a blood libel ?

On September 15, 2024, in the notoriously left-wing daily Haaretz (to which we have subscribed, considering the real quality of some of its news), the most astounding chronicle was published by one of its star chroniclers, by the name of Gideon. I printed it, as it was so unbelievable in its content. A short 750-word piece, which started defining Israel as "a country that lives on blood" (1st line). It then went on describing it as "the only country in the world whose existence is based on blood" (sic). Continuing : "There is no other country like it in the world (...) 10 million residents willing to live in a country that runs on blood." You can check it out, unbelievable as it may sound.

Well, it's Gideon, you know. I listened to the man once, in Jerusalem, at the American Colony Hotel, a few years ago. You have to keep an open mind, at all times, don't you. Wasn't particularly impressed. Something big was missing in his speech. What was the elephant in his mental room ?

I then learnt that his two sons had rejected him, as someone who was disconnected from reality. So what ?

I stopped reading him long ago. As I would not read 95% of op-eds in Al Jazeera. Would not touch the stuff.

What do we need binary black & white, venomous speeches for, in the end ? Be they from one side or the other.

Back to Gideon, making you wonder : what exactly is a blood libel ?

Check it out : it's basically an accusation through the centuries that Jews used the blood of non-Jews for their rituals. Leading to their rejection and regular persecution, all the way to their systematic extermination, by the millions, in the forties of the past century.

You then read September Gideon again, writing about Israel as "the only country in the world whose existence is based on blood", with its "ten million residents willing to live in a country that runs on blood."

Goodness gracious ! Has the man lost his mind ? Is he that sick ?

We remember him, some years ago, lauding in writing the Palestinians who hijacked the passengers' planes, back in September 1970, to make them land in Jordan, and then blow them up. Speaking of all the hassle tens of millions of passengers have been through since, taking belts off and all in air terminals, in that omnipresent psychosis of terror attacks, you wonder how sick the man could be. 

Common sense, plain and simple.

Still, as if he finally came to his senses this fall, after some long Gideon insanity, he's gone back to the Gaza Envelope, and eventually opened his eyes to what happened a year ago. You should read it.

Death Was Omnipresent Here: Revisiting the Sites of the October 7 Attacks, One Year Later

Is there a need to ask : whose blood was it ?

Has Gideon finally found the elephant in his mental room ?

October 6, 2024. Is there an observatory of wars ?

Observatories of the heavens, we have plenty. Not that they teach us, the ordinary folks, a lot about ourselves and life. Observatories of the deadly fires of earth, and their dangers, where about ?

Looking back in dismay, you do count fourteen major wars in half a century. From 1974 till now.

Bis repetita, for what it's worth and the sake of awareness, down to the fourteenth war :
Starting with the Viet-Nam war (3 million killed out of 40 million then), followed by Cambodia (2 million out of 6 million then), and their sequel the Soviet-Afghanistan war, 1979-1989, fueled by US vows of revenge for Viet-Nam (2 to 3 million killed out of 10 million).

The spectre of war then shifts from the Far East to the Near East, with the Iran-Iraq war, 1982-1988, 1,5 million dead (out of 15 for Iraq, 45 for Iran then), immediately followed by the First Gulf War, 1990-1991, 300,000 killed in 6 months; with the atypical intrusion of the Rwandan genocide in 1994 : 600,000 killed in 3 months (out of 6.7 million in 1994). And then, North Africa, with the Algerian civil war, 1992-2002 : 150,000 killed. Plus the Chechen wars, 1994-1996 and 1999-2000 : 150,000 killed at least.

How do you start the Third Millenium, this 21st century ?

With the Second Afghanistan war, triggered by the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, 2001-2021, 200,000 killed. In its wake, the Second Gulf War, 2003-2011, with 1 million killed (out of 30 around 2010).

You then get into the third block of major, ongoing wars in half a century :

from the Second Gulf War to the Syria civil war, 2011 to this day 2024, 600,000 killed (out of 20 million). The Yemen civil war, 2014-2024, 400,000 killed. The Sudan civil war, 2022-2024, 150,000 killed to this day.

The war spectre shifts closer to the West, with Ukraine, 2022-2024, over 300,000 killed.

This last war we are faced with, the Lebanon-Gaza-Israel-West Bank-Iran war, 1982-2024, so far has taken the lives of 60,000 people.

The war machines never stop, on this small blue planet, do they ? Nor does it seem to be a subject of concern to many... What exactly do the United Nations do to stop wars ?

October 7, 2024. 3 a.m. vigil 

Fasting for sharing inner peace. "Peace is not the absence of war..."

"Peace is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence...

benevolence, confidence, justice."                   Baruch Spinoza

October 8, 2024. The view from above.

As seen from space, it's just "us", humankind, this unique artefact, lost in the bottomless blackness of infinity. You zoom a bit, and you find the burning lands in Africa and the East : Sudan, Yemen, Syria - 1,2 million killed, millions displaced, maimed, traumatized to death. You add Lebanon and Israel/Palestine, with Iran in the background, and it makes you wonder. What's the point of it all ?

There has been Hezbollah in Lebanon. There has been Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and its many offshoots (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al-Qaeda in the Sinai Peninsula, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Al Shabaab in East Africa...). There has been Boko Haram in Nigeria. There has been Hamas in Gaza, following the steps of Hezbollah. There has been the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Leading us to the 2023-2024 deadly fires.

The inconvenient truth, as seen from a distance, is that nobody wants to have anything to do with jihadis, Muslim Brothers and "holy warriors" in the name of Allah, nobody from Morocco and Algeria to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan. Nobody on the surface of it. Leaving the tiny Israel meddle with the dirty jobs.

The "dirty jobs" : in Algeria, from 1992 to 2002, the choice was either to "eradicate the terrorists", or "negotiate" with them. The army, the authorities, and finally the people, chose to "eradicate". Putting a brutal end to the reign of terror (Algeria was about to become another radical Islamic Republic, in the steps of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic State). There was no talk of "zionist occupation" in Algeria, was there ?

Take Egypt : after the Muslim Brothers (of which Hamas is an official offshoot) won the elections in 2011, and seized power in 2012, the new President was "removed" by the army in July 2013, and later thrown into jail, where he died in 2019. Mid-August 2013 : the police and some military units suppressed the gathering of his last fervent supporters by killing hundreds of them in a few hours (some say, over two thousand in two days) - the Rabaa massacre, as it remains in history.

You can't remember any protests against this massacre in Egypt, or against the slaughters committed by the Groupe Islamique Armé in Algeria in the nineties. How come ?

October 9, 2024. Our paradox as peacemakers. Si vis pacem... If you want peace...

The quest for peace is no abstract thing, floating in some mushy terra incognita. It is rooted in a certain space, at a certain time, within a specific regional context.

When we campaigned for peace in Algeria in the late nineties, with 68 Nobel laureates, we specifically campaigned against terror. Against terrorists.   http://peacelines.eklablog.com/algeria-1997-1998-c24712112

Horrified by the slaughters in the name of fundamentalism, we express our ultimate and universal reprobation concerning all acts of bloody savagery committed by the armed groups which terrorize Algeria. No political or religious speech, whatsoever, can ever legitimate the massacre of innocents, the murder of a child, the rape of a woman.

Things were clear enough. As they were when Hezbollah kidnapped dozens of civilians in the eighties (among them French journalists, diplomats) and sent suicide trucks to take the lives of American and French peacekeeping forces in Beirut. As they were when Hamas, Islamic Jihad et al, broke through the border fences, to slaughter, rape, and exterminate hundreds of helpless civilians - among them 364 young revelers at a festival-, kidnapping dozens of others, to use as bargaining chips.

When we campaigned in Algiers, against terror, there were severed heads on car hoods, in the morning, in Algiers' Casbah and Bab el Oued. We could not stay more than one night in the same place. Strangely, at the time, Western media couldn't care less. It was Arabs killing Arabs to them. And hard news don't sell well.

As mentioned above, the dilemma in Algeria then was : what to do ? Negotiate with "them", the terrorists ? Or "eradicate them", as most of the army brass wanted ?  Soon enough, it became clear that you just cannot have a dialogue with people whose aim is to establish a strict code of sharia all over the land, by all means.

The problem of means remains the sticking point. By any means necessary ? We would not post Ben Dror Yemini's latest piece here, despite its logics, as we oppose his "by any means necessary" conclusion - Commander Sinwar has been following this precise logics, of Any Means Necessary, and this is the key to his ultimate defeat.

Among the 68 Nobel laureates who campaigned with us for Algeria, against terror : the Dalai Lama, President Gorbachev, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Elie Wiesel, Saul Bellow, Ernst Otto Fischer, Ilya Prigogine, François Jacob, Arthur Kornberg, Maurice Wilkins, Arno Penzias, Franco Modigliani...

We have no illusions whatsoever that the fate of secular thinkers and activists (journalists, writers, teachers, intellectuals...) in Algeria was to be slaughtered and beheaded (along with unwanted foreigners). You should check it out :

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

And, by the way, deep gratitude to Jimmy Wales, whose foundation we support with small regular donations. This is what we believe in, as peacemakers. Freely providing the food for understanding and analyzing.

Leading us to a de facto warning : Si vis Pacem, Para Bellum.

The original formula, by Vegetius, being :  Igitur quī dēsīderat pācem, præparet bellum

 Therefore, whoever wishes peace, let them prepare for war.

October 10, 2024. Beyond failure.

We failed. We failed Chaim Peri, Alex Dancyg, Amiram Cooper, and Yoram Metzger. And more.
We did not bring them back alive.

We all failed. From top to bottom.

But we're still there, in this, together.

And this is what matters.

Beyond our shortcomings, and broken dreams.

We are standing together, praying and struggling.

For the sake of humanity.

Of unity in humanity.

October 11, 2024. For Naama, Arbel, Gadi, Yair...

Taken captive: Naama Levy, Hands of Peace project alumnus

Taken captive: Arbel Yehud, third generation on Kibbutz Nir Oz  killing and kidnapping a quarter of the kibbutz residents

Taken captive: Gadi Moshe Mozes, expert potato farmer, ‘saba’ to all

Taken captive: Devoted uncle and Nir Oz resident Yair Horn

October 13, 2024. Outlandish. What do you think ?

This was in April this year. The Islamic Republic of Iran sent 120 of those ballistic missiles into Israel. Starting the first space war in the history of humankind. And nobody asked for Iran to be banned from the United Nations ?

This is now, October 1st. They launched some 200 of them. 180 fell in Israel.

Let it be clear to any visitors : we are no more partisans now than we were in Bosnia, in the early nineties, or in Algeria in the late nineties. We root for the people, wherever, regardless of their creeds or ethnicity.

In Central Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Algeria, in Israel and Palestine since 2000, we've seen and witnessed too much of what human folly will achieve, relentlessly. But something this size was never seen anywhere.

To my observer's eyes, this is the most insane, frightening thing I have ever seen, in the field of warfare.

So far, the anti-missile shields operated by Israelis, Americans, Jordanians too from what we hear, have amazingly reduced the scope of damage to humankind - one little girl from a Palestinian family, in April, another Palestinian, a workingman from Gaza, in October. What is it the launchers were trying to achieve ? They could not care less, could they.

After some research : these ballistic missiles fly at 13 to 15 times the speed of sound : 16,000 to  18,000 kmh. The Shahab 3 flies at 7 times the speed of sound.

They carry an explosive head of one ton. They pierce through the atmosphere up to 400 km, stay around ten minutes up there, and fly back into the atmosphere in a matter of seconds. By the way, 400 km is the orbiting altitude of the International Space Station.

These missiles are 12 meter-long and weigh about six tons.

Seriously, how about that impacting in your backyard ?

More seriously, what game is Iran playing ? Striving to get into the private club of the 10 major arms makers & exporters worldwide ? Is this what it's all about, under the surface of speeches ?

We'd kindly ask of you to consider facts on the ground :

Whether you like it or not, this "Holy Land" called both Israel and Palestine is tiny. Slightly larger than New Jersey. When you consider only the inhabited part, it's 10,000 square kilometers - roughly the size of Connecticut. For 9.5 million inhabitants. One in five of them Arabs.

Iran counts not far from 90 million inhabitants, on 1,600,000 square kilometers.

Who is David, who is Goliath, in this present version of the story ?

Sadly, the Palestinians' fate is of no more relevance than the Ukrainians' fate since 2022.

October 14, 2024. Sickening war culture... UN what have you done ?

Sickening war culture... when you have to learn everything there is to know about ballistic missiles with an apogee of 400 km and a one-ton warhead, and deadly drones with a range of 200 km... but now is no time to get sick at all, only time to realize about all this Iranian technology spread from Tehran to Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen.

Realize, wake up, and face it. In anger. In revulsion at this insane game would-be gendarmes of the East are playing, facing what they call the Great Satan (the US) and the Little Satan (Israel), at the expense of people, be they Israelis, Palestinians, or Lebanese.

And then, you find out what we all had known for years, that the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon), established in 1978, has been nothing but a desperate joke, contrary to UNPROFOR in Bosnia, which did everything it could to prevent the civil war from getting more devastating than it was. Thanks to two professional armies mostly, the French and the British, who paid the human price for it.

The UNIFIL is manned by 10,000 soldiers and officers, from 46 countries, whose specific mandate was to prevent the establishment of all "unauthorized armed personnel, such as Hezbollah" in the South of Lebanon "take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind". Spending hundreds of millions of dollars yearly, to no avail, or precious little. "Unauthorized armed personnel" have ruled the land, under the nose of these ten thousand men, and they started firing countless rockets since October 8, 2024. What has the UNIFIL done ?

Despite all kinds you find there, Indonesians (1231), Italians (1068), Indians (903), Nepalese (876), Ghanaians (873), Malaysians (833), Spaniards (676)...

You N, You N, what have you done ?

What have you been doing all these years ?

Aluf Benn, Haaretz, October 18, 2024 

UNIFIL in South Lebanon Reminds Us of Israel's Famous Keystone Cop 

By the way, October 14 is the day the Crew 8 of SpaceX is due to splash back on Earth, at 3:38 pm. Composed of one Russian and three Americans (including the first AfroAmerican woman in space), they had been orbiting around the Earth for seven months, 400 km above our heads. Perfect Russian-American cooperation up there !

400 km : the apogee of Iranian ballistic missiles launched in April and October. Go figure, an Iranian missile with a warhead of one ton, meeting with the International Space Station (or close observed, monitored by the ISS members)

Hello, Planet Earth ! Is anybody out there ?

Is anybody in charge ?

October 15, 2024. Voices rising to uphold ground truths.

In the morning of October 14, we had to raise the appalling question about the UN forces in Lebanon : UN what you done ? By the end of the day, a former Israeli ambassador to the US had his analysis posted in YNet News :

UNIFIL ineffective and should leave southern Lebanon 

Today, another voice is rising, to the point that "it is an enabler of the very conflict it was designed to prevent" :

Catherine Perez-Shakdam , The Times of Israel, October 15, 2024 

UNIFIL, the peacekeepers who watch but do not see

Michael Oren evokes other peacekeeping missions by the UN that met with failure.

He did not mention the UN Protection Force in Bosnia, from 1992 to 1995.

In these four years, 100,000 people were killed, 38,000 of them civilians. Had it not been for UNPROFOR, the casualties would likely have doubled. There was a price to be paid by the peacekeepers in arms (14,000 men - 11,000 of them soldiers to start with, up to 38,600 men in 1995) : 167 of them were killed. The most efficient on the ground always were the British and the French - 55 French soldiers were killed in action, 700 wounded. 59 British soldiers paid the ultimate price.

As a regular witness to their presence and involvement in Middle Bosnia, from 1993 to the end of 1995, I can only testify about the complexity and danger of such operations. The British in particular did save us from lethal firing on several occasions, from Gornji-Vakuf to Vitez. 112 French soldiers died in ex-Yugoslavia from 1992 to 2011.

After the horrendous suicide attacks against American and French peacekeeping forces in Beirut in October 1983, it seems that nobody is willing to die for Lebanon. Except the Israeli neighbours, drawn into the quagmire...

October 16, 2024.

October 17, 2024. Disgust and dismay. 

Only a handful of men in Gaza organized the onslaught of October 7, last year. Leaving all others in darkness, until the fatal dawn. You look at where we're at, after a year of bloodshed and chaos. The scale of destruction in Gaza, unheard of. The war spreading to Lebanon, to Yemen, with Iran behind, pulling its deadly strings.

300 ballistic missiles launched on April 13 and October 1 ! Never before.

The first space war in the history of humankind.

And Iran has not been banned from the United Nations ?

Now it seems that all the organizers of October 7 are dead and cold.

Were they just puppets ?

October 18, 2024. A hundred hostages.

A hundred hostages are left in the tunnels and wrecked buildings of Gaza, children and old folks. Women and men. With two million two hundred thousand other hostages, at the hands of a defeated jihadi pack.

BBC piece today : Hamas: What has happened to its most prominent leaders? [Issa, Meshaal, Zahar, Deif, Haniyeh, Sinwar] Of the six, four have been killed. Meshaal and Zahar remain. Meshaal, 68, has been abroad for many years. He resigned and left the stage to Haniyeh in 2017. He's said to be one of the richest men around, with a fortune of 3 billion dollars or more. Zahar, 79, has not been heard of for over a year. In December 2022, he gave an interview to Yemeni TV, in which he claimed the aim was to "liberate not only our land, but the 510 million square kilometers of the whole planet".

October 19, 2024. The war of images.

There is footage released of Sinwar's final moments, alone, wounded, sitting in an armchair, his face masked by a turban, covered with dust, in a wrecked house, without a gun. His right hand appears to have been torn off. From the left hand he throws a stick at the drone filming him. There is other footage on the eve of October 7, late in the evening, with his smiling wife and kids, busy moving stuff into a tunnel in Khan Yunis.

To some, his final stand will make him a defiant hero. To others, no more heroes. Only failed and broken fugitives.

October 20, 2024. Dialogue with Gaza.

On the day Sinwar's death was announced, in the afternoon, we received a message from Gaza, about "the crimes of the enemy (...) against women, children...". It has been an outcry in some sectors of the Western world, 42,000 people killed, 25,000 of them women, children, unarmed civilians.

Looking back at the wars Peace Lines has been involved in :

Bosnia (1992-1995) : 58,000 civilians were killed, as opposed to 37,000 combatants.

Kosovo (1998-1999) : 11,000 civilians killed, as opposed to 3,000 combatants.

Algeria civil war (1992-2002) : around 150,000 civilians killed. There are no figures for soldiers and jihadis. What we know is that Algeria is composed of three military regions (West, Algiers, East) plus the Sahara desert. In the West slightly less than a thousand jihadis were killed. Possibly five times that were killed in the whole land. The losses of the army have not been made public, but it is likely they would compare, at most. The village massacres (1997-1998), committed by the Islamic Armed Group took a blood-curdling toll among civilians (Rais, Bentalha) - hence our Nobel Call for Algeria, supported by 68 Nobel laureates then :

We are human beings.

Horrified by the slaughters in the name of fundamentalism...

  http://peacelines.eklablog.com/algeria-1997-1998-c24712112

Strange, the way most people, Palestinians included, choose to ignore the calvary Algeria went through in its Black Decade (1992-2002). The last message Sinwar sent to the outside world was to the newly elected Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune - "Algeria" to many has remained a myth, for its blood-soaked struggle against the French, with its appalling consequences - facts : 400,000 deaths; all non-Muslims  had to flee and lose all, one million of them; tens of thousands of Muslims were slaughtered as they opted for the French rule.

The double blindness : to delete one of the worst cases of total ethnical cleansing against non-Muslims (1962), and to erase the toll of the civil war for Algerian civilians, thirty years later, Muslims slaughtering Muslims, in the name of Allah.

October 21, 2024. "Conquer, kick out, resettle" ?

As early as 2001, we campaigned with 10 Palestinian and Israeli NGOs, 18 Nobel laureates, and 7 Members of the European Parliament, for the evacuation of "the colonies recognized as sources of inequity and hatred". The Peace through Justice Call. http://peacelines.eklablog.com/israel-palestine-2000-2014-c24800090

The Gaza population in 2000 was around 1 million, with 8,000 Israeli settlers occupying 25% of the land.

By mid-September 2005, under the authority of PM Ariel Sharon, the settlers were all evacuated.

By mid-June 2007, Gaza had fallen under the exclusive control of Hamas & Islamic Jihad (Battle of Gaza)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_(2007)

This morning it is reported that hundreds of Israelis gathered in support of "permanent resettlement of Gaza".

"Conquer, kick out, resettle" is their motto. 

The organizer told the journalists "Jews will go into Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza."

Three main ministers of the current government support them.

October 22, 2024. 2000-2024 non-stop.

Twenty-four years ago, Yosef Avrahami and Vadim Norzhich, two young army reservists who'd lost their way in Ramallah, were lynched to death by a mob which invaded a police station. Remember the similar fate of Derek Woods and Robert Howes in Belfast in 1988 (see October 4 above). The ugly parallel between Palestinians and the Irish... Why haven't the Irish shared their experience of giving up armed violence ?

It's like yesterday to me, when I was smoothly abducted in Ramallah, on my birthday, October 22, 2000. Smoothly : no violence was involved to start with. I just had to follow my captors, for an "interview", until i found myself alone with them, in that vacant unfinished building on the outskirts of the city. Their task being to find out if I was a zionist spy, and then dispose of me, of my corpse, that is.

And then, you had the kidnapping of BBC reporter Alan Johnston, in Gaza, in March 2007.

The kidnapping and murder of Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni, in Gaza, in April 2011.

How do you survive in these environments ?

You simply stick to the truth of who you are. No mind games. No pretence. No winking. No lies.

The truth will set you free.

With a little luck, and a little help from... "above".

Think your job is not over yet.

You're still needed down here.

October 23, 2024. In the thick of the night.

 Almost 4 a.m.  You've been up for over an hour. You never know what the night will hold for all of us.

The United Nations let the Islamic Republic Iran get away with their second launching of balistic missiles on October 1. Strangely ? Had they convened to put the onus on "Iran" to make amends, study the possibility of a temporary exclusion of Iran from the UN, things would look different.

In the absence of such global awareness, condemnation, we're expecting the Israeli counterstrike any night now.

And the reaction to that reaction.

There were precedents, involving Saddam's Iraq. Hezbollah too.

If you look at the unfolding of conflicts over thirty years, you get a feeling there is more control over the consequences of "strikes". As if there were a hidden consensus between the people who push the lethal buttons.

We, the people, who struggle for our freedom and sanity, still pay the price for all this raging chaos.

October 24, 2024. In case you wonder...

... why the war drags on :

Nina Fox, Nir Tsadok, Hagar Kohavi, YNet News, October 24, 2024  

Sapir feared suffocation; Staff Sergeant D. found bodies: People with firsthand knowledge of Gaza tunnels

October 25, 2024. In case you wonder about Lebanon and UNIFIL...

Back to Aluf Benn's piece, in Haaretz, a week ago. Haaretz is left wing, right ? You wouldn't suspect them of a pro-Bibi bias, would you.

Aluf Benn, Haaretz, October 18, 2024 

UNIFIL in South Lebanon Reminds Us of Israel's Famous Keystone Cop

 Who drilled, why did they drill and what did they hide in the openings? UNIFIL had no idea. The mystery was solved only after the Israeli army invaded Lebanon and invited reporters into Hezbollah's elaborate, well-equipped tunnels.

But despite this complete and ongoing failure, UNIFIL continues its worthless mission. 

October 26, 2024. A new type of warfare. 

25 days after the Islamic Republic of Iran targeted Israel with 180 ballistic missiles equipped with a warhead of one tone each (see pictures above), Israel sent three waves of bombers over Iranian military assets from Syria and Iraq to Iran. Iran says two soldiers only were killed, and "resumes normalcy after Israeli strikes".

Lo and behold : "Officials emphasized that schools and sports events continued as scheduled."

Is this a "fake war" between the two, or rather the emergence of a new war order, in which belligerents strive not to inflict pain upon civilians, and not to hit cities ?

In which case, after Iran's response to come to Israel's reaction, the conditions should be gathered for a real cease-fire both in Gaza and Lebanon, once the new American Referee has been elected.

October 27, 2024. About UNRWA. Strange days.

 "Israel's UN membership could be suspended if it severs ties with UNRWA, officials warn"

From prolonged observation on the ground, from Ramallah, Nablus, to Gaza : it is obvious that UNRWA schools have been controlled for many years by elements hostile to whatever comes from the West, to put it mildly - in Ramallah, Nablus, Gaza, after many meetings, teachers and heads of schools never agreed with our educational bilingual programme based on Martin Luther King's principles, unfolding the codes of non-violent coexistence.

Still, you can't replace UNRWA. Their summer camps in Gaza, with hundreds of kids competing for the largest number of kites in the sky worldwide was one of their brightest achievements.
At the entrance of every UNRWA building, you find signs prohibiting all weapons.

It should be both logical and possible to implement this philosophy to ban the use of all kinds of arms in every school, in every classroom.

After all, since we have this sign all over the place, you "only" have to get coherent, implement it.

Strangely, there has been talk of suspending Israel from the UN, because of its opposition to some troubling aspects of UNRWA. And no talk of suspending Iran, for its unprecedented violation of space in the history of humankind, with ballistic missiles loaded with one ton of explosives !

One of the four International Space Station astronauts back on Earth is under medical survey, and the reason is not disclosed. Imagine (s)he saw one of these missiles close enough ?

If the use of such ballistic missiles isn't the most serious breach of consensus among nations since the creation of the UN, you wonder what could be.

How come no one has been asking for the suspension of Iran from the United Nations ? Seriously. Possibly, that could have stopped the fatal cycle.

October 28, 2024. Desolation Rows, Gaza. ‘Force is not the answer to everything’

You look at pictures of these Iranian missiles fallen in the middle of nowhere, and you look at films of what were Gaza streets eighteen months ago, and you're scared of ever going back to Gaza. What people will see when they're allowed in.

"The blood of the children, women, the youth and the elderly of Gaza, who are not Hamas members, will haunt us for generations"                                                       an open letter signed by 3,000 Israelis earlier this months

 ‘Force is not the answer to everything’

“Not every objective can be achieved solely through military action,”