2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War

 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War (Israeli–Palestinian conflict,  bombing,  cover-up,  murder,  genocide?)

Date	7 October 2023 - Present
Location	Israel,  Gaza Strip,  West Bank,  Golan Heights,  Lebanon,  Egypt,  Indian Ocean,  Iraq,  Syria
Participants	Israel, Hezbollah, Iran, Houthi, Yemen
Perpetrators	Hamas, IDF
Deaths	186,000
Injured (non-fatal)	91,000
Subpage	•2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/Israeli invasion of Gaza •2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/October 7
Description	Hamas attack on dozens of illegal Israeli settlements in Southern Israel provoking mass retaliatory killings by Israel. Corporate media call it the Israeli "9-11", while critics of Israel refer to "10-7" as a staged, military operation in order to manufacture consent for a disproportionate response.

On 7 October 2023 – precisely one day after the 50th anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur War – the 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War began. Around 3,000 armed Palestinian militants led by Hamas infiltrated Israel from the Gaza Strip – seemingly unopposed – and broke through the Gaza–Israel barrier into nearby settlements and military installations in Israel, in Operation Al Aqsa Flood killing over 1100 Israeli's.

Israel responded by bombarding and invading Gaza in the far more devastating Operation Iron Sword.

By December 2023 reports from the NYT and Haaretz emerged, that the Israeli IDF and Unit 8200 knew of the exact details of the planned incursion, but deemed the plan "not realistic", raising questions over the official narrative of 10-7 being a Palestinian "surprise attack". Another investigation by Al Jazeera showed Israel lied about parts of the most horrendous reports on October 7.

In July 2024, Jonathan Cook reported that the official death toll in Gaza was Israeli disinformation: "The casualty numbers are far, far higher."

Background

Full article: Israel

Full article: Palestine

Full article: Yom Kippur War

The land that is now known as Israel and Palestine has been contested for millennia. World War 2 and the Balfour Declaration caused the formation of a Zionist deep state of Israel at the will of Zionists, many of whom settled there in the 1800s. Israel was founded in 1948 and remained and expanded ever since, despite numerous attacks.

Official narrative

Bodycam footage released - NBC

Full article: Israeli–Palestinian conflict

At least 3,000 rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip as a large number of Hamas militants broke through the border and entered Israel, killing at least 900 Israelis and prompting Israel's government to declare a state of emergency. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel "is at war" in a national address following the beginning of the attacks. Palestinian militants who infiltrated Israel went into several kibbutzim as well as the city of Sderot.]

October 7

Full article: 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/October 7

After a surprise hang-glider and land assault on Israeli settlements, military bases and a music festival, over 1000 people died on the 7th of October by the hand of Hamas fighters. Israeli forces claim that Hamas gunmen killed more than 100 people in the kibbutz of Be'eri and a similar number in the Kfar Aza kibbutz. By 11 November 2023, the death toll in Gaza had reportedly exceeded 11,000 Palestinians whilst the Israelis revised downward their death toll from the October 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel to around 1,200 from a previous government estimate of 1,400.

Israeli military prisoners-of-war and civilians, including children, had been taken hostage by Palestinian militants; several of these hostages have reportedly since been taken to the Gaza Strip. Numerous cases of violence against Israeli civilians have occurred since the beginning of the Hamas offensive, including a massacre at a music festival in Re'im that killed at least 260. Hamas called it "Operation Al Aqsa Flood". In response, the IDF launched Operation Iron Sword, where it called up 300,000 reservists and started a massive assault on Gaza. On the northern border with Lebanon, minor exchanges of fire continued.

IDF officials reported that the bodies of 1,500 Hamas soldiers had been recovered from Israeli territory.. Apparently not many prisoners were taken, with pictures showing desecration of their corpses.

Israeli Invasion of Gaza

Full article: 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/Israeli invasion of Gaza

On 27 October 2023, Israel launched an ongoing invasion of the Gaza Strip with the stated goals of destroying Hamas, a military and political movement that led an attack on Israel earlier in the month, and to free hostages taken by the group. Before the invasion, dubbed Operation Swords of Iron, Israel declared war, tightened its blockade, and ordered the evacuation of the northern Gaza Strip.[1]

Even though the UN warned there was "no safe place in Gaza" months after the invasion started, the IDF started torture en masse of the Palestinian people by cutting of internet, water, food supplies, electricity and medicine while violating numerous Geneva Conventions, seemingly committing many war crimes.

Genocide?

On December 29, South Africa’s government filed a case with the International Court of Justice alleging that, by atrocities against the Palestinian people after October 7, Israel is violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The government of Israel has said it would be represented at the ICJ to oppose the allegations, and presented their own claims in CCM of rapes and murders by Hamas. The court said it was "plausible", but not proven yet, and was asked to gather documents for after the war.

Problems with official narrative

Haaretz article: Detailing unverified and inaccurate accounts of the 7 October Hamas attack

Given the reputation of Israel, and the enormous reach and capabilities of Israel's military-intelligence apparatus, the attack is unlikely to have been unexpected, as has been acknowledged by IDF and Egyptian officials, who repeatedly warned Tel Aviv that an escalation was imminent Stories in corporate media also say that US intelligence officials also had warned that Hamas was preparing a large-scale operation.

In March 2023, Israel passed a law that according to Minister of Settlements Orit Strock was "a step on the way to re-occupying and resettling the Gaza Strip", a move she acknowledged would cause "many casualties."

Disinformation

On 20 March 2024, Al Jazeera Investigations released an hour-long video entitled "October 7" which found that many of the worst stories that came out in the days following the attack were false. This was especially true of atrocities that were used repeatedly by politicians in Israel and the West to justify the ferocity of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, such as the mass killing of babies and allegations of widespread and systematic rape. The video revealed that claims by the Israel Defence Force that it found 8 burned babies at a house in Kibbutz Be’eri were entirely untrue. There were no babies in the house and the 12 civilians inside were killed by Israeli forces when they stormed the house.

Ben Shapiro shared an image of "burned Jewish babies" during the October 20233 "surprise" Hamas attack on Israel. The picture was soon exposed as an AI generated fake

On 11 October 2023, Jonathan Cook posted on X:

"So Western journalists simply accepted without any evidence that Hamas beheaded 40 Israeli babies. It's not like they don't know there's a precedent for this kind of disinformation.

The Intercept: New York Times Exposé Lacks Evidence to Claim Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence Oct. 7 - Democracy Now

"Remember how a US ally spread lies in 1990 about Iraqi soldiers pulling babies from incubators.

"The fake testimony was supplied by a schoolgirl, 'Nayirah', who it much later turned out was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. Her lies helped pave the way to the US launching the 1991 Gulf War."

Difference in Aid by EU Telecom-providers

A Dutch investigation by journalist Tim Hofman revealed the European internet providers actually decided within one day to make telephones calls - to Ukraine from the EU - free of charge. The same European Telecom providers refused the same procedures for at least 8 months into the 2023 Israel-Hamas conflict. Upon investigation by the same journalist, at least one Dutch telecom provider lied on camera that a "middle-man actually requested the 26 EU countries via the European Parliament" to immediately order telecom companies within one day after the Russian invasion. After verifying this procedure with multiple Dutch Ministerial Departments, this handler was denied to have ever existed, playing questions as to who or whom is deep lobbying to deny Palestinians cheaper telecommunication systems, but grant them to Ukrainians at instant.

US Claims

Iran was reported in the Washington Post to give "Hamas (...) $70 million in military assistance from Iran. According to a US State Department report from 2020, Iran provides about $100 million annually to Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command Current and former intelligence officials confirmed that Iran had provided technical help to Hamas in manufacturing the more than 4,000 rockets and armed drones launched into Israel. At least some Hamas militants also have undergone training in advanced military tactics, including at Lebanese camps staffed by technical advisers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah.

Iranian officials helped plan Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut a week before the attack, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah. Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon, they said. Although the US denied this, Syrian advisors and EU officials repeated the claim, in a rare agreement with Iran. In case, these claims are true, the picture painted by the US and Israel of a pure intelligence failure is even more suspicious.

Iran denied any involvement.

US Weapons

US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene argued the weapons used in the attack appeared to be American and were moved from Ukraine to Gaza.

"Israel might use nuclear bomb"

On 5 November 2023, Sky News reported that an Israeli junior minister who said dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was "one of the possibilities" in the Hamas war has been suspended, with Benjamin Netanyahu saying the statement was "not based in reality".

Junior minister Amihai Eliyahu, of the right-wing Otzma Yehudit party, made the claim in an interview with Kol Beramah radio.

Reactions

A good example of how this event has played into PM Netanyahu's hand; Al Jazeera wrote; The Israeli military is bombarding Gaza, Hamas is launching more rockets and the death toll on both sides of the divide is rising. Splashed across Israeli media headlines is ‘Israel at War’ with many outlets reporting events as they happen, while some op-eds – and even high profile figures – have been using rhetoric criticised as dangerous and inflammatory.

Yemen Airstrike

4 weeks into the conflict, Houthi militants in Yemen announced a number of missile and drone attacks on Israel. In January 2024, the US and UK launched airstrikes on more than a dozen sites used by Houthis in Yemen

Interestingly enough, a spokesperson for Hamas admitted Israel to be practically undefeated with US support, but wants to maintain the strategy of tension between Gaza and Tel Aviv, seemingly not trying to advance the cause of the Palestine with other means, apart from bloodshed.

President Joe Biden and his top advisers were reported by CNN after 2 months to be warning Israel "with growing force" that it will become increasingly difficult for it to pursue its military goals in Gaza as global outcry intensifies about the scale of humanitarian suffering there.

UN reaction

The UN released several statements, but refused by veto of the US to act after Israel invaded Gaza, as the other countries voted in favor of a ceasefire in early 2024.

UN Security Council holds open debate on Israel-Hamas conflict - 24 October

Covert operation

US Navy Seals were reported to enter the conflict. Israel was using banned white phosphorus artillery projectiles on harbours in Gaza, while denying using them.

Deep state leadership

Full article: Israeli Deep state

PM Netanyahu rallied the country and even his enemies in Israeli parliament, as he even was able to form a new coalition in Israeli parliament, which is very important as Israel has no constitution and Israeli parliament has a final say since 2023 is nearly all affairs as they control the judges.

Colonists

“There had already been a significant increase in violence by Israeli settlers this year, even before the Hamas attack, according to UN data, with more than 100 incidents reported each month and about 400 people driven from their land between January and August.

Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem told the BBC that since the attack, it had documented "a concerted and organised effort by settlers to use the fact that the entire international and local attention is focused on Gaza and the north of Israel to try to seize land in the West Bank". Partial data compiled by B'Tselem, covering the first six days after the Hamas attack, recorded at least 46 separate incidents in which it said settlers threatened, physically attacked or damaged the property of Palestinians in the West Bank.

"A lot of shepherding families and communities have fled because they were threatened in the past week by settlers," said Roy Yellin, a spokesman for B'Tselem. "Settlers have been giving residents a deadline to leave and telling them if they don't they will be harmed. And some villages have been totally emptied out."”
Joel Gunter,  BBC (2023) 

The attack also gave the IDF a window to raze several villages in the West Bank and remove Palestinian villages. A crime according to NGOs.

Iran attack

Iran attacked Israel with at least 200 missiles and drones on April 14, 2024, after Israel striking the Iranian Embassy in Damascus 14 days prior. The strike resulted in minimal damage to infrastructure or civilians. This was the first time Iran since the establishment of the Islamic Republic fired rockets directly at Israeli soil..

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Craig Murray	“The International Court of Justice has stated definitively that the Israeli occupation is illegal and it is the duty of states not to support it. Yet in UK law it is perfectly legal to state that you support the IDF and hope that they kill all the Palestinians in Gaza But it is illegal in the UK - and carries 14 years in jail - to express support for named Palestinian organisations engaged, legally in international law, in armed resistance to illegal occupation.”	Craig Murray	20 August 2024
Ronald Plasterk	“All the more exasperating that in the reactions to Hamas's horrific pogrom, in which more Jews were murdered in one day than at any time since the Holocaust, first, it is pretended that it is indeed symmetrical, and the major media such as the NOS news even ostentatiously takes sides with Hamas and against Israel (see, for example, holding Israel directly responsible for that bomb on the hospital, without any check, and then no neat response). You can have all sorts of objections to the Netanyahu government, and because Israel is a democracy (the only one in the Middle East) there are many people even within Israel who voice those objections. You can insist on observing borders when counterattacking. If you recognise Israel's full right to defend itself, there are always limits anyway; remember, for example, that Israel is a nuclear power. But even if you keep the balance right, it is important to have in mind why the situation between Israel and Hamas is anything but symmetrical. There are civilian casualties on both sides. A first fundamental difference is that Hamas, as a terror organisation, is out to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, while the Israeli army is trying to hit Hamas while inflicting as few civilian casualties as possible. You might perhaps think that they should take even more of a margin on that point, but in any case the intention is a completely different one from Hamas’. A further difference is that Israeli soldiers may be willing to die in war, but still prefer to come home to their families in one piece. Hamas has a death culture, with the highest good being to blow yourself up, for which you are rewarded with sex with 72 young virgins (not wondering if those 72 young women feel like it). Then taking civilians hostage as human shields, including very young children. That is a serious war crime, and one would expect that all responses would constantly insist that Hamas must first release those hostages. On top of that, Hamas is also preventing its own civilians from leaving locations where Hamas posts are located, precisely with the intention of those civilians being killed in attacks from Israel. Another criminal tactic that Israel does not use.”	Ronald Plasterk	2023

 

Known Participants

All 5 of the participants already have pages here:

Participant	Description
Ansarallah	Islamist political and military organisation from Yemen.
Hezbollah	Political Islamic party, and army fighting many wars in the Middle East, linked to possible CIA drug trafficking.
Iran	Iran possesses the 4th largest oil reserves of any nation state.
Israel	Only country in the world to be founded, led and designated by and for Jewish people after the Holocaust. Zionists achieved this with forms of land grabbing, apartheid and murder of Palestinians, but saying that is apparently.... antisemitic...
Yemen	A war torn country in the Middle East

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:A Devastating Indictment of Israel’s War on Gaza	Article	11 January 2024	Mike Small Roshdi Sarraj
Document:Biden’s pier for Gaza is a hollow gesture that will change almost nothing	blog post	8 March 2024	Jonathan Cook	President Biden needs to look like Gaza’s saviour when Democrats are deciding who they are voting for. He and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.
Document:Complaint filed alleging UK ministers' complicity in Israeli war crimes	Article	16 January 2024	Alex MacDonald Dania Akkad
Document:Dear Mr Starmer, we fact-checked your 7 Oct statement. You’re welcome	blog post	7 October 2024	Editor	"Appalling mix of regurgitated and already-discredited lies with grotesque one-sidedness"
Document:Dikgang Moseneke to join bench of judges in Israel-Hamas world court case	Article	5 January 2024	Kgaugelo Masweneng	Should presiding American Judge Joan Donoghue recuse herself when it comes to determining whether US staunch ally Israel has committed genocide in Gaza?
Document:Goliath's Revenge - Israel and Apartheid South Africa	Article	5 January 2024	Christopher Nicholson	"During the apartheid years I practised as a human rights lawyer and one of my colleagues defended a young boy, charged with assaulting a police officer. He had thrown a stone at the man, who was on board a tank-like military vehicle, but had arrogantly left his helmet off. A law in force with regard to firearms required a warning shot to be fired in certain circumstances. The prosecutor then demanded of the latter-day David: ‘Why did you not throw a warning stone?’"
Document:ICC prosecutor says world leaders 'threatened' him over Israel arrest warrants	Article	5 September 2024	News Desk	“Target Israel, and we will target you,” US Senators, led by Tom Cotton, warned in the letter. “Such actions are illegitimate and lack legal basis, and, if carried out, will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution.” Senators Mitch McConnell (minority leader), Rick Scott, Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio also signed the letter.
Document:Jill Stein considering Palestinian American as running mate	Article	11 August 2024	Maya Yang	Kamala Harris mishandled anti-war demonstrators who protested during her rally in Detroit, Michigan, chanting: “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide." Harris responded: “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
Document:Meeting the Gaze of the Ghost in the Rubble	Article	28 February 2024	George Gunn	Meanwhile the ghost still looks out from the rubble of Gaza. Her stare searches across the ocean of our conscience like the beam of a lighthouse. The ghost in the rubble asks of us all: why can we not stop this madness and feed the people?
Document:On Gaza, Sunak's Tories and Starmer's Labour have merged into a single pro-war party	Article	22 January 2024	Peter Oborne	If the ICJ rules in South Africa’s favour then Rishi Sunak, as well as US President Joe Biden, will be wide open to the charge that they are aiding and abetting genocide. And so will Labour’s Keir Starmer.
Document:Only a failing US empire would be so blind as to cheer Netanyahu and his genocide	Article	26 July 2024	Jonathan Cook	Members of the US Congress roared “USA!” to their satrap from Israel, just as Roman senators once roared “Glory!” to generals whose victories they assumed would continue forever. Every empire falls. Its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become.
Document:The Presence of Evil	blog post	25 July 2024	Craig Murray	Netanyahu’s slanderous attacks on the institutions of international law were applauded to the rafters by America’s political leaders. The whole world was watching, and took note. The Zionist project per se is evil. To steal another people’s land and subject them to long and progressive genocide is about as evil a deed as can be imagined.
Document:The official death toll in Gaza is a lie. The casualty numbers are far, far higher	blog post	31 July 2024	Jonathan Cook	In July 2024, researchers to The Lancet medical journal very conservatively estimated that the total number of Gazans who will die over the coming months – not just from bombs but as a result of the lack of medical care, insanitary conditions and famine – is 186,000, or 8 per cent of the population.
Document:What Really Happens in Blackburn	blog post	24 June 2024	Craig Murray	"When my candidacy for Blackburn was announced in March, Jack Straw issued an attack on me on 3 April 2024, stating that I had 'no cause' to stand in Blackburn. Then lo and behold, two months later after the election was called Jack Straw’s old fixer turns up with an 'Independent Candidate' to split the pro-Palestine vote."
Stop the Worsening Undercount of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza	Article	5 March 2024	Ralph Nader	From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour.

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