Whereas an in-depth replace on the scenario in Gaza and the broader Israel genocidal marketing campaign towards Palestinians appears overdue, any full-bore remedy would shortly grow to be emotionally numbing because of extent and savagery of the killing, maiming, and torture of Palestinians. That’s earlier than attending to the destruction of Palestinian society by destroying its establishments: its mosques, universities, colleges, and hospitals.
As we’ll additionally cowl briefly, the Biden Administration is attempting to have it each methods with voters, pretending to Do One thing by way of verbal moist noodle-love-taps. The newest was a cynical decision on the UN which pretended to be a ceasefire decision however a studying of the small print confirmed it to be something however. Nonetheless, the US received to play virtuous sufferer when China and Russia vetoed it.
Within the meantime, regardless of Israel’s persevering with success in wiping out weak and defenseless Gazans, with a coverage of hunger now doing a lot of the heavy lifting, the Israeli military continues to appear to be a paper tiger. As we’ll focus on, it’s brief on materials and is more and more depending on a US which has drained its reserves within the Ukraine struggle. That’s separate from the factors usually made by Scott Ritter, that the IDF can also be operationally third-rate, with its air pressure the one controversial exception.
First, to the persevering with horror on the bottom. A strong, though due to this fact grim, sighting comes by way of the must-read Intercept story, “MAN-MADE HELL ON EARTH”: A CANADIAN DOCTOR ON HIS MEDICAL MISSION TO GAZA. The topic is Dr. Yasser Khan, an ophthalmologist specializing in eyelid and reconstructive facial surgical procedure, who has taught and carried out surgical procedure in 45 international locations in humanitarian settings. As many different docs who’ve served in Gaza attest, he has by no means seen something approaching the trauma and horror he witnessed there. A number of snippets from Dr. Kahn:
What we’d been seeing livestreamed on Instagram, on social media or no matter, I really noticed myself and it was worse than I can think about…
Docs have been kidnapped, and, sure, they’ve been tortured. They dehumanize the docs and well being care staff after they seize them. We’ve seen photos of them, so we all know this occurs, and it does certainly occur. A number of of the docs went via torture, and one physician that got here again, he’s a normal surgeon, he got here again, I used to be chatting with his spouse, and he’s not the identical anymore. He was tortured and he nonetheless has torture marks over his physique, and he’s a normal surgeon….These docs after they come again, the few which might be launched, there’s nonetheless loads which might be below custody with the Israeli forces, they’re not the identical anymore…..
I’m an eye fixed surgeon, an eye fixed plastic surgeon, and so I noticed the basic, what I penned “the Gaza shrapnel face,” as a result of in an explosive situation, you don’t know what’s coming. When there’s an explosion, you don’t go like this [cover your face], you sort of really, the truth is, open your eyes. And so shrapnel’s in all places. It’s a widely known undeniable fact that the Israeli forces are experimenting [with] weapons in Gaza to spice up their weapon manufacturing business. As a result of if a weapon is battle-tested, it’s extra worthwhile, isn’t it? It’s received the next worth. So principally they’re utilizing these weapons, these missiles that purposely, intently create these massive shrapnel fragments that go in all places. They usually trigger amputations which might be uncommon.
Dr. Khan carried out surgical procedures to take away eyes of a number of kids wounded in Israeli strikes, calling the accidents “the Gaza shrapnel face.”
Most amputations happen on the weak factors, the elbow or the knee, and they also’re higher tolerated. However these [shrapnel fragments] are inflicting mid-thigh, mid-arm amputations which might be tougher, more difficult, and likewise the rehabilitation afterward can also be more difficult. Additionally these shrapnels [are] not like a bullet wound. A bullet wound goes out and in; there’s an entry and exit level. Shrapnel stays there. So that you gotta take it out. So the accidents I noticed had been — I imply, I noticed folks with their eyes blown aside. And after I was there, and that is my expertise, I handled all kids after I was there the primary time. It was children that [were aged] 2, 6, 9, 10, 13, 15, and 16, and 17 had been those that I handled. And their eyes sadly needed to be eliminated. That they had shrapnel of their eye sockets that I needed to take away and, after all, take away the attention. There’s many sufferers, many kids who had shrapnel in each their eyes. And you’ll solely achieve this a lot as a result of proper now, due to the help blockade and due to the destruction of most of Gaza, there’s no gear out there to take shrapnel that’s within the eye out. And so we simply depart them alone and so they finally go blind.And so I noticed these facial accidents, I noticed limbs of youngsters simply sort of hanging off, barely related. I noticed belly wounds the place you had, after all, the intestines uncovered
He additionally describes how the kid amputees, even when not topic to a number of amputations because of an infection, can’t be handled in order to be fitted for a prosthetic….charitably assuming they survive and there may be cash and for that:
The factor is that in any regular amputation, in a traditional circumstance, a baby who will get amputated goes via about eight or 9 operations till they’re adults, to revise the stump and repair the stump. Who’s going to try this now? Not solely have they misplaced their helps, their complete household construction, they don’t have the household construction or the infrastructure to try this as a result of it’s all been destroyed.
We had identified early on, even whereas the IDF was bombing Gaza exhausting, that that they had accomplished sufficient injury to infrastructure, as in destroying shelter and chopping off the electrical energy for water transport and purification (at that time that they had not struck remedy crops…I assume that has occurred) that the IDF might let nature run its course and let illness, hunger, and dehydration end off the Gaza inhabitants. Israel now seems to be relying totally on that method, although it’s nonetheless concentrating on key services just like the final remaining fairly purposeful hospital and likewise noising up its plan to assault Rafah, as in kill extra Palestinians by army means if Egypt, as anticipated, continues to refuse to allow the ethnic cleaning by letting them enter Egypt.
To underscore that the hunger is meant, in case you harbored any doubt, see the Guardian in Israel will not approve Unrwa meals support to northern Gaza, company says:
The United Nations company for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, stated on Sunday that Israel had definitively barred it from making support deliveries in northern Gaza, the place the specter of famine is highest…
Final week a UN-backed meals safety evaluation warned that famine was projected to hit the north of Gaza by Could except there was pressing intervention. Unrwa has not been in a position to ship meals to the north since 29 January, [Unrwa spokesperson, Juliette] Touma stated.
Some consultant commentary:
Apparent sufficient but?
Simply because the IPC – the worldwide authoritative establishment for starvation evaluation – decided that each one of North Gaza is in “disaster” famine standing (the place “hunger, loss of life, destitution and intensely crucial acute malnutrition ranges are evident”), with… pic.twitter.com/m5437lWiSX
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 25, 2024
And to fill out the image of Zionist savagery:
There may be now overwhelming proof of rape and sexual assault of Palestinians by Israeli forces in Gaza, and of sexual abuse of Palestinian children within the West Financial institution.
Discover the deafening silence on this.
Why?
As a result of they don’t see Palestinian girls and children as people. pic.twitter.com/X5yqelgqQm
— Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) March 24, 2024
The newest Choose Napolitano interview of former Colonel Larry Wilkerson prominently featured a recent instance of US cynicism, that of proposing a UN “ceasefire” decision that was something however.
Beginning at 1:15:
Napolitano: That is fairly a turnabout for the US…America after all supplied a decision for a direct and long-term ceasefire. It included a condemnation of Hamas…The one this morning was vetoed by Russia and China….What sort of a sea-shift in considering would there be to…for…Joe Biden and Tony Blinken to authorize this decision in what should have been defiance of the Israeli donor clasa?
Wilkerson: I feel it’s a bit extra refined than that. I don’t imply that time period within the constructive sense. They didn’t demand a stop hearth. What they did was they demanded a willpower of a course of to get to a ceasefire. For those who parse the language actually carefully, and what you see there, and this is the reason the Russians vetoed it, notably the Russians however others too, and I’m not speaking in regards to the present 5 however the massive fifteen on the Safety Council. What they did following that was outline what [it] would imply to find out the method [interrupts self] that is pure Blinkenese, and to a sure extent Bidenese, decide the method to get there, and that course of can be orchestrated and demanded and would confine itself to what had occurred with the US’ diplomatic course of. Now that’s a convoluted method of claiming that Israel and the US will decide the method that determines the ceasefire.
Napolitano: Nicely, that’s not a ceasefire!
Wilkerson: No, completely not. And there’s one other facet. They backed off their sturdy assertion that they need to not go into Rafah with main army pressure. Simply utterly nullified that.
There’s a wild card right here, in that regardless of overwhelming sympathy among the many Muslim “avenue” for the Palestinians, and frustration that governments haven’t acted, the truth, as many commentators have identified, is that none of those governments need to provoke a struggle, provided that their international locations, notably the one most ready to take action, Hezbollah as part of the federal government in Lebanon, are in no place to endure the fabric and financial value.
However as Alastair Crooke has burdened, the Resistance really is in a sluggish boil, attritional battle, with the Houthis taking essentially the most seen, frontal motion and Hezbollah pressuring Israel with its cross-border strikes, imposing prices on Israel by stopping the return of households close to the Lebanon border to their houses and communities. Crooke has argued that the Resistance members labored out a while in the past that each the US and Israel had organized their affairs in order to conduct brief, intense, air-attack pushed conflicts, and to not endure a protracted grind. We’ve featured occasional discussions of how the struggle is inflicting severe, and more and more, lasting injury on Israel’s economic system. Many companies have shuttered or are working at diminished ranges. If that persists too lengthy, they lose staffers and clients completely. Equally, a narrative final week reported that a big majority of the Israelis that decamped Israel shortly after October 7 deliberate to not return. That once more is a everlasting lack of productive and consumption capability.
However will uprisings pressure some international locations to take a extra frontal posture with Israel? In that case, what kind may that take? See as an illustration:
BREAKING | Jordanian safety forces deploy fuel bombs to suppress protesters heading in direction of the Israeli embassy in condemnation of the dominion’s normalization and complicity within the struggle on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/v5KGnXrzHp
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) March 24, 2024
Within the meantime, one other method the attritional Resistance technique is exposing Israeli weak spot is on the army entrance. See this story from The New Arab, Israeli military compelled to make use of ‘Seventies’ munitions amid shortages at begin of Gaza struggle. Understand that although the story presents itself as presenting situations on the outset of the battle, when Israel had restricted and too usually outdated armaments shares. Nonetheless, there isn’t a good purpose to suppose the scenario has improved a lot. Although Israel’s wants are presumably decrease than these of Ukraine, we all know Ukraine has come near cleansing out your complete Collective West cabinet.
Observe additional its point out of 155 mm missile shortages. The article doesn’t point out a degree typically made by Scott Ritter: the tubes put on out below excessive use and have to be substitute. What are these inventories like? From The New Arab:
Israel’s military was compelled to make use of outdated weapons and arms gear as the military discovered itself inadequately ready at the beginning of the struggle in Gaza…
Within the first months of the struggle, the military, ill-prepared to combat, confronted a munitions scarcity that compelled models to deploy Fifties-era shells, inflicting an “operational nightmare”.
Israeli every day Haaretz spoke to a reservist who described the chaos as Hamas’ incursion into southern Israel on October 7 took the army abruptly.
“There was a loopy scarcity of kit and the canons we had weren’t all in working order. Some labored, some had been half lifeless,” the reservist advised the newspaper.
The struggle has additionally seen Israel drop an unprecedented variety of bombs on Gaza in simply 5 months which has destroyed 35 p.c of the territory’s infrastructure and killed 32,000 Palestinians…
Although Israel has a complicated arms business, it additionally depends on the US for big parts of its weapons provides..
Artillery models scrambling to defend themselves towards assaults from Hamas battalions had been left to make use of “munitions relationship again to the Fifties” which had been in poor situation and produced “unusually excessive portions of smoke that made it troublesome for crews to fireplace for extended durations of time”, the Haaretz article famous.
In line with NATO requirements, Israel makes use of “one of many world’s most needed” 155mm artillery shells for its howitzer weapons, a sort of long-range artillery weapon which appears like a cannon.
A number of the cannons getting used within the struggle originate from offers made with the US military within the Seventies, based on the Haaretz article.
These shells have seen large worth rises as demand has soared internationally in recent times, and Israel’s defence ministry signed a multi-million-dollar contract with Israeli weapons agency Elbit Programs which has factories in Britain, to provide these shells…
Different troopers interviewed by Haaretz spoke of shortages of munitions from overfiring, and situations whereby officers advised troops to protect shells in case of flare ups in numerous areas of Gaza.
The soldier additionally talked about that irregular shipments of munitions brought on ‘chaos,’ noting an event when a unit acquired munitions marked “for coaching solely” on the shells
We even have this attention-grabbing improvement, from Almayadeen Hezbollah drones deal exact hits to 2 Iron Dome launchers (hat tip Kevin W):
The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon – Hezbollah introduced that its fighters launched two suicide drones at two Iron Dome launchers within the Israeli “Kfar Blum” army web site at 12:20 pm (native time), dealing exact hits to the targets…
Earlier as we speak, Hezbollah launched its operations at midday by participating the Israeli “Ramim” barrack utilizing artillery shells.
The Resistance additionally focused the Israeli espionage gear at al-Radar web site within the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms at 1:10 pm, utilizing correct weapons and dealing exact hits to the goal.
At 01:15 pm, Hezbollah additional focused the Israeli Bayad Blida submit.
In parallel, Israeli occupation forces continued to focus on villages in south Lebanon as they shelled an space between Alma al-Shaab and al-Dhayrah, along with the Wadi al-Saluki and the outskirts of Kfar Kila, Kfar Chouba, and Jabal al-Sadana, based on our correspondent…
Amid Hezbollah’s strike on “Kfar Blum”, Israeli media expressed concern over the absence of deterrence towards the operations launched by the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, stressing that the absence of any warning earlier than these operations is a “actual drawback”
Earlier than the operation on “Kfar Blum”, the sirens weren’t activated, which led to a fireplace within the space as there was no probability to take applicable emergency measures, Israeli media added.
Israeli media additionally reported that Israeli circles view the assault on ‘Kfar Blum” with nice seriousness and warning, explaining that its outcomes can’t be revealed.
Alastair Crooke has stated that the Hebrew press has usually had tales of unfavorable army deveopments, notably IDF deaths, shortly yanked by the censors. So the dearth of affirmation from the Israel facet as to the effectiveness of the strikes on the Iron Dome platforms doesn’t imply they didn’t draw some blood. However the truth that Hezbollah did seem to hit them is severe in and of itself.
The additional query is whether or not these strikes are essentially the most that Hezbollah can do now, or a warning of what may be in retailer?
We’ll cease right here, since that is a very dynamic scenario and dwelling an excessive amount of on present new data runs the chance of shedding sight of larger patterns. However in gentle of the above, Israel’s insistence on attacking Rafah and its growing saber-rattling with Lebanon appears destructively reckless, or at greatest primarily based on undue religion that the US can bail them out of no matter conflagration they set off.
