Despite trying to avoid Christian preachers as much as I’m able to, I’ve noticed that one technique they use is to focus on a mundane aspect or event in their personal life and then apply if – often inappropriately – to the global stage. I can do that too. Apologies that it is an unsavoury topic.
I’ve had a big stubborn turd blocking my toilet yesterday and overnight, surviving many flushes. In the same way we have big politician turds behaving totally inappropriately hanging about far longer than they should. We have to shift these turds Biden, Sunak and Netanyahu and that cnut Starmer is no better – another nasty Tory pretending to be a Socialist.
Smoke rises as Israeli artillery units and howitzers stationed in the military zone launch attacks near the Gaza border in Nahal Oz, Israel on December 10, 2023. (Photo: Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“As global resistance to war and apartheid grows, it is important that the public know exactly who is making this violence possible.”
As of Wednesday, a U.S.-based Quaker group’s online database listed over two dozen companies profiting from the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have spent the last 10 weeks waging what experts call a “genocidal” war that sent defense stocks soaring.
Backed by $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the United States, Israel declared war on October 7 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack that killed over 1,100 people. Since then, Israeli forces have killed over 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza—sparking massive protests demanding a cease-fire around the world, including many led by Jewish people.
“War and attacks on civilians will never bring safety or peace to Israelis or Palestinians.”
The growing death toll, displacement, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and difficulties in delivering humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave have also increased scrutiny of a $14.3 billion package for the war that the Biden administration requested from Congress as well as criticism of the U.S. weapon-makers and billionaire donors who are arming and enabling the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
“The scale of destruction and war crimes in Gaza would not be possible without massive weapon transfers from the U.S.,” said Noam Perry of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the group behind the tool, in a statement Wednesday. “As global resistance to war and apartheid grows, it is important that the public know exactly who is making this violence possible.”
As the AFSC webpage details:
Shortly after October 7, the U.S. government started transferring to Israel massive amounts of weapons. Among these weapons, Israel received more than 15,000 bombs and 50,000 artillery shells within just the first month-and-a-half. These transfers have been deliberately shrouded in secrecy to avoid public scrutiny and prevent Congress from exercising any meaningful oversight.
Some of these weapons were purchased using U.S. taxpayers’ money through the Foreign Military Sales program; some were direct commercial sales purchased through Israel’s own budget; and some were replenished U.S. military stockpiles in Israel, which the Israeli military may also use. A list of known U.S. arms transfers is maintained by the Forum on the Arms Trade.
The webpage notes that the list is based on reporting, social media, and other open sources, and “focuses on weapons used by Israel because all Palestinian militant groups are already sanctioned and receive no support from Western governments or corporations.”
For example, Boeing, the world’s fifth-largest weapon manufacturer, makes F-15 fighter jets and Apache AH-64 attack helicopters used by the Israeli forces, as well as “multiple types of unguided small diameter bombs (SDBs) and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits” that have been used “extensively” during the war, including in a bombing of Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp.
After decades of Israeli occupation forces using Caterpillar’s armored D9 bulldozers to “demolish Palestinian homes and civilian infrastructure in the occupied West Bank and to enforce the blockade of the Gaza Strip,” the machines “have been crucial in the Israeli military’s ground invasion” of the enclave, according to AFSC.
Israeli forces are invading the Nour Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem, bringing a bulldozer to destroy infrastructure belonging to the refugees there. This is on the same day that Israeli forces bulldozed and murdered displaced people and their tents in Kamal Adwan hospital, Gaza. pic.twitter.com/CH3gdoe1Zd
While both of those war profiteers are based in the United States, the list isn’t limited to U.S. firms, also calling out the world’s seventh-largest weapon manufacturer, the U.K.’s BAE Systems, and Israel’s largest weapon manufacturer, Elbit Systems, “one of the primary suppliers of weapons and surveillance systems to the Israeli military.”
Other companies on the list include weapons giants such as General Dynamics, General Electric, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX—formerly Raytheon—as well as vehicle companies AM General, Ford, Oshkosh, Toyota, and drone manufacturers AeroVironment, Skydio, and XTEND.
The list also targets U.S.-based Colt’s Manufacturing Company, which makes firearms including the M16, and Emtan Karmiel, an Israeli firm that “delivered some 12,000 rifles” to the country’s forces within a week of October 7. It also includes Israel Aerospace Industries, a state-owned manufacturer that “makes multiple weapons systems specifically for the Israeli military.”
Israeli journalist says Jews who want to live in Israel have no choice but to take up arms
There is no choice for a Jew who wants to live in the land of Israel, except to hold the Tanakh (Hebrew scriptures) in one hand, and in the other hand, hold an M16 rifle. pic.twitter.com/XlU19KS3Lp
Other Israeli firms listed include Plasan, which makes the SandCat light armored vehicle, and MDT Armor, which is owned by the Israeli company Shladot and makes the David Urban Light Armored Vehicle used by the military for patrols and reconnaissance.
The other foreign firms on the list are ThyssenKrupp, the German company that built four warships for Israel, and Nordic Ammunition Company, which makes the M141 Bunker Defeat Munition, a shoulder-fired “bunker-buster” rocket.
“As a Quaker organization with a long history of work in Palestine and Israel, including in Gaza, we support a full arms embargo to both Israeli and Palestinian militant groups,” Perry stressed Wednesday. “War and attacks on civilians will never bring safety or peace to Israelis or Palestinians. We need a permanent cease-fire and to work toward a just and lasting peace in the region.”
Protesters on the Embankment during a pro-Palestine march , organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, in central London, to call for a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, December 9, 2023
JEREMY CORBYN demanded the government back justice for the Palestinian people today as MPs debated the Gaza crisis.
Urging the government to support a ceasefire in the impending UN security council vote, Mr Corbyn said an end to hostilities was vital to “stop escalation in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.”
He said without an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, justice for Palestinian refugees and a halt to the siege of Gaza “we will be back here again” in the years ahead.
Labour MP Zarah Sultana joined other MPs in demanding that the government “listen to growing calls for a global ceasefire” after describing harrowing conditions in Gaza hospitals, where vinegar and washing-up liquid are being used to disinfect wounds.
The mood over Gaza seemed to be shifting across the Commons, with veteran Tory back-bench MP Edward Leigh saying that Conservatives were growing more concerned about Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” and that it was “not in our interest” to be associated with the onslaught.
Israel carries out unprecedented attacks against health workers and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, bulldozing hospital grounds and detaining doctors
Al-Awda Hospital Manager Dr. Ahmed Muhanna was arrested by Israeli Forces and his whereabouts are currently unknown. Photo: People’s Health Movement
“Moral decay,” as Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) put it, is possibly the best way to summarize the past weekend of Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) attacks on health in the Gaza Strip. Days of unimaginable horrors haunt health workers, patients, and displaced people in Gaza’s hospitals as violent raids and sieges of health centers continue over 70 days into Israel’s war on Gaza.
On Saturday, December 16, reports came in about Israeli bulldozers crushing those staying in tents on the grounds of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. The raid turned the area into a mass grave, leaving many more injured behind. Soon after the event, Mai al-Kaila, Palestinian Health Minister, called for an urgent probe into the event.
Not only did the Israeli occupation bulldoze living people, but they also “released dogs on us in the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital, and they mauled a wounded person before his martyrdom,” said the Ministry of Health’s statement.
Around the time the ministry’s statement was published, there were still 12 babies in the incubators of Kamal Adwan who health staff could not reach, leaving the infants without food.
The Israeli occupation announced it had detained dozens of people during the raid. According to reports, these also include health workers.
Health workers were detained and taken to unknown locations from Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalya, another health center that had been besieged for days. Among the 21 health workers who had been detained was Dr. Ahmed Muhanna, the director of the hospital, who had been one of the health staff to provide regular reports about the health situation in the Gaza Strip. All the health workers except for Dr. Muhanna were released after a three-hour interrogation, but the hospital director’s current location remains unknown.
A week ago, Dr. Muhanna reported that the situation in the hospital was “critical,” with the hospital under complete siege and snipers having shot two staff members. Shortly before he was taken away by the IOF, Dr. Muhanna had reassured media that the hospital staff remained steadfast and in high spirits despite the siege.
Among other hospitals attacked were the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, and Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa. Bombs damaged the maternity ward at Nasser Medical Complex, killing one and injuring at least ten. A new mission led by the WHO visited Al-Shifa on December 16, delivering much-needed supplies. The team found a “hospital in need of resuscitation.”
According to their report, there are no blood supplies at Al-Shifa, meaning that no surgical interventions can take place, and supplies needed for pain management are also virtually non-existent. The WHO described the “emergency department as a ‘bloodbath’, with hundreds of injured patients inside, and new patients arriving every minute.”
“Patients with trauma injuries were being sutured on the floor,” the WHO reported, and “care must be exercised not to step on patients on the floor.”
On December 17, news came in that Hani Al-Haitham, the head of Al-Shifa’s emergency department, was killed in an Israeli attack, along with his wife, Dr. Sameera Ghifari, and their children.
Together with the increasing risk of the spread of infectious diseases and food deprivation, the escalating attacks against health services and health workers in Palestine are making Gaza completely unlivable, providing further evidence of the genocidal intention behind Israeli attacks.
People’s Health Dispatchis a fortnightly bulletin published by thePeople’s Health Movementand Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, clickhere.
Al Awda Association and the People’s Health Movement launched a campaign for the release of Dr. Ahmed Muhanna, director of Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza
Dr. Ahmed Muhanna appeared on numerous international news stations calling for an end to Israel’s attacks on health workers. Photo: Screenshot
Al Awda Health and Community Association and the People’s Health Movement (PHM) have launched a campaign calling for the release of Dr. Ahmed Muhanna, the director of Al Awda’s hospital in the area of Tal Al-Zaatar in Jabalya, northern Gaza. PHM has also called for an end to Israeli attacks on health workers in Palestine, warning that the “deliberate targeting of the healthcare system by Israel is a blatant war crime.”
Dr. Muhanna was detained by Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) following a raid on Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalya that began on December 17. While other staff members were detained by Israeli soldiers, they were released after several hours of questioning. On the other hand, Dr. Muhanna was not released, and his current status remains unknown.
The director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalya became an unofficial spokesperson for health workers in Palestine since Israel started its latest round of attacks on October 7. From the very beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza, Dr. Muhanna kept contact with regional and international organizations, sharing situation reports to illustrate the dire state of hospitals in the Gaza Strip.
Along with other members of the staff, Dr. Muhanna was also one of the health workers who refused to abandon the hospital after receiving evacuation orders from the Israeli occupation in the earlier phases of the war. At the time, Dr. Muhanna said the evacuation “is not possible,” given the serious conditions of several patients. “The hospital staff is determined to stay and provide health care to patients,” he asserted at the time.
Shortly before his arrest, Dr. Muhanna sent a new message to Al Awda’s network of contacts, saying: “No one can move in the hospital because of the [Israeli] sniper. The situation in the hospital is terrible. We have 38 patients, some of them lacking medicine. We have no oxygen and only very little fuel for a small generator. We have food for 2 to 3 days tops. The situation is critical.”
Al Awda Association and PHM have called on health workers and activists around the world to denounce Dr. Muhanna’s arrest and apply pressure on their governments to push Israeli authorities to free him. The organizations are also inviting health workers to organize actions in support of Dr. Muhanna and his comrades in the Gaza Strip, making their struggle visible in their workplaces.
People’s Health Dispatchis a fortnightly bulletin published by thePeople’s Health Movementand Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, clickhere.
