The US and UK governments recently couldn’t get accurate intelligence on the just concluded Nyege Nyege festival in Uganda. They failed on Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in 2001, and it is doubtable they can be relied upon on Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital’s alleged links to Hamas resistance military command centre. Knowing what the world now knows, that the WMD intelligence was “sexed-up”, anything presented by Israel against Hamas and Gaza should be taken with a bucket of salt.
Forty-five days and over 12,000 overwhelmingly innocent civilians murdered since Israel Defence Forces (IDF) hitherto presented to the world as ‘invincible’ has still failed to ‘crush’ Harakah al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah a.k.a. Hamas, (Islamic Resistance) a motley underground resistance that uses improvised arms and ammunition within the small and blockaded enclave of Gaza Strip. In spite Israel and US global media propaganda, many in the world, see this war, particularly the assault by hordes of military tanks, aerial bombardments, and ground troops into Gaza’s largest civilian al-Shifa 22-acre hospital, now turned a refugee camp, as a new low for the empire and whatever it stands for.
The IDF and its intelligence apparatus have still failed to find or rescue one of the 239 including its members taken hostage on 7th October 2023 by Hamas, demonstrating a huge humiliation in psychological warfare. Israel and US have been spreading fake intelligence that al-Shifa hospital is a Hamas Command Centre, or at least part of its infrastructure that must destroyed, and pinning their hopes to find hostages there.
Like the infamous and now internationally discredited little bottle that Gen. Collin Powel, then Secretary of State presented to the UN Security Council as the WMD powder that Saddam possessed, claims linking al-Shifa to Hamas command, could become as another Israel and US major intelligence failure because so far, no major weapons or technical military capabilities have been found there. Only seven rusty imitation of AK riffles probably planted by the occupying force have been shown to select coterie of western media embedded with IDF as proof of Hamas trail in al-Shifa.
The destroyed civilian homes, road, water, electricity, fuel, health, agriculture and school infrastructures along with murdered newborns, little children, pregnant women, elderly men, patients in hospitals, and loose electric cables hanging from destroyed roofs is all the IDF can present to the world as its war trophies against Hama. So far, victims include 4,500 children, 3,145 women, 198 medics, 51 journalists, 22 civil defence staff, and 40 patients inside al-Shifa hospital alone with 29,200 injured and 3,600 unaccounted. Never before except for the US wars of aggression in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria has impunity been allowed to hold sway as justification for retribution.
Like during the Iraq and Afghanistan now forgotten genocidal wars, Israel as the allied NATO forces is presenting the possible killing of Hamas leaders as a means to wipe out Palestinian resistance against Israel occupation and land grab. As was the killing of Sadam, Osama Bin Laden and Col. Muammar Gaddafi, for a would-be bogus claim to a major victory in their engineered war on “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, “axis of evil” and “global terrorism” the big lies have now been fully exposed to the whole world. The US and its allies after prolonged-misguided wars had to cut their huge losses in equipment, personnel and image, and fled back leaving those countries burning to ashes.
Israel, powerful as it is said, and enjoying global diplomatic outreach on account of Nazi Germany mistakes during World War II, now its staunch ally supported by US hegemony, must not be permitted to enjoy an uncontested victory in the on-going collective punishment against unarmed Palestinians. Like Koffi Annan (RIP) whose immediate resignation George W Bush demanded for questioning the validity the of Iraq war, we have to pity Antonio Guterres, the lame-duck UN Secretary General harangued daily by Israel officials with threats to deny him and his officials entry into Israel. Nevertheless, the world’s people of good conscience even from their small corners must speak aloud against Israel’s ongoing breaches of international rules and norms with gross impunity having hallmarks of war crimes.
The Israel army and intelligence services, that considered itself invincible and was believed as such globally, is now trying albeit miserably to present murdering children and women in hospital wards as its victory yet the Palestinian resistance continue to inflict losses on IDF with 49 personnel killed so far, and not any of the 239 abductees found or rescued. It’s a failure that must torment the abrasive Benjamin Netanyahu considering the expansive resources at his disposal.
Abhorrent as the 7th October massacre was, Hamas, at least for now has lured Israel into urban guerrilla close combat to force the Palestinian question back to the global attention. Ukrainian president Alexander Zelensky must be sulking at being pushed and abandoned in the Russian hornet by the US. Depending on how Israel and its backers play, a prolonged war of attrition with no real winners could just be beginning.
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