Al Jazeera – December 24, 2023
166 Palestinians killed in Gaza in last 24 hours
Health Ministry in Gaza says 166 Palestinians killed, 384 wounded in Israeli attacks in last 24 hours.
UNRWA says it “cannot deliver meaningful aid” under intense Israeli bombardments of Gaza after the UN Security Council called for increased access.
“Stop the genocide now,” says Bethlehem Pastor Munther Isaac, as churches across Palestine cancel Christmas celebrations.
Government Media Office in Gaza says 103 journalists have now been killed since October 7.
More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7. The revised death toll from Hamas’s attack on Israel stands at 1,139.
Gaza Civil Defence: We lost 40 members of our crews due to Israeli targeting
Mahmoud Basal, the Gaza Civil Defense spokesman, has told Al Jazeera the following:
Our work is now primitive due to the absence of heavy equipment and machinery.
A large number of people killed are under the rubble of targeted buildings in the north.
Israeli army vehicles ran over a number of Palestinian bodies.
A large number of Palestinians killed had their bodies decomposed due to the difficulty of reaching them.
Jabalia is subjected to a real genocide by the Israeli occupation.
Israeli forces have dredged wells in a number of areas and we appeal to the world to intervene.
The number of civil defence members killed has risen to 40 since the start of the aggression.
The Israeli occupation prevents us from extricating living people from buildings by targeting us.
We monitored many operations of Palestinians being run over by Israeli army vehicles in Tal al-Hawa area in Gaza City.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/12/24/israel-hamas-war-live-israeli-bombardments-hunger-spread-in-gaza
Electronics Intifada – December 24, 2023
Gaza facing a Christmas genocide
by Jennifer Welborn Williams
Palestine’s Christian community is – not surprisingly – the oldest in the world, dating back to the first century.
In Gaza, the community is now tiny, with just some 800 to 1,000 Christians remaining. But Gaza’s churches are some of the oldest in existence anywhere on the planet.
Now these churches are shelters for refugees, and Christians are targets of Israel’s genocidal violence.
On 19 October, the third oldest church in the world, the Church of Saint Porphyrius, was hit by an Israeli airstrike, killing 18 people.
Ibrahim Jahsan survived the strike and continues to shelter there with his family. He told Al Jazeera, “We were baptized here and we will die here.”
Two weeks later, the Israeli military bombed the Greek Orthodox Cultural Center in the southern Gaza City neighborhood of Tel al-Hawa.
Food, blankets, gas cylinders and other much needed supplies were destroyed in the blast. The destruction of cultural centers and religious sites features as part of the definition of genocide.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem released a statement condemning the attack.
“Such attacks on civilians, particularly children, and the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, cannot be justified on rational or humanitarian grounds and are fundamentally at odds with even the most basic moral values.”
The World Council of Churches joined in condemning the attacks, calling them a “clear violation of international law.”
Gaza’s only Christian hospital was also bombed. A blast rocked Gaza City’s al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in October. Hundreds died in the explosion, hundreds were injured. Israel denied responsibility for the carnage.
In cold blood
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta described the scene to NBC News. He was in an operating room when the ceiling collapsed on him. He says he made his way to the exit where he witnessed “people carrying wounded and walking wounded with blood streaming down covered in dust.”
Both the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders condemned the attack.
On 16 December, Nahida Antoun and her daughter Samar Antoun were shot to death by Israeli snipers as they walked inside the grounds of the Holy Family Parish in Gaza. At least seven other members of Gaza’s only Catholic Church were wounded by sniper fire.
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said: “One was killed as she tried to carry the other to safety.”
“They were shot in cold blood.”
The patriarchate posted photos of damage to the Church from missile attacks. The damage shows fires and extreme destruction to the convent. The tweet indicates that “deaths and injuries of a number of citizens in the Latin convent of Gaza” occurred and calls for an “end [to] this senseless conflict.”
Pope Francis condemned the attack: “Unarmed civilians are being bombed and shot at, and this has happened inside the Holy Family Parish complex, where there are no terrorists, but families, children, sick people with disabilities, nuns.”
The Pope continued, “Some say, ‘It’s terrorism, it’s war.’ Yes, it is war. It is terrorism.”
This is the second time the Pope has accused Israel of terrorism. On 22 November, the pontiff said Israel had gone beyond war: “This is not war. This is terrorism.”
Indeed, it is terrorism. It is terrorism against Palestinians, and some of the most vulnerable Palestinians are the minority Christian population now besieged in the few churches in Gaza.
Israel is targeting this small population of Christians and they’re doing it at Christmas.
The Israeli military is bombing churches, destroying Christian community centers, and sending snipers to shoot Christian women to death while the world watches, all part of the ninth stage of genocide: Extermination.
How many Christians will be left when Israel is done?
Jennifer Welborn Williams has a postgraduate degree in history and is a freelance writer.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/gaza-facing-christmas-genocide/43041
Houthi Red Sea Blockade Could 'Starve' Western War Machine of Oil
By Ekaterina Blinova
US oil stockpiles are at their 40-year lows and the Houthi Red Sea blockage can make matters much worse for Washington, Maram Susli, better known as blogger Syrian Girl, told Sputnik's New Rules podcast.
Yemen's armed forces stepped up attacks on trade vessels linked to Israel in the Red Sea in a bid to force Tel Aviv into halting its ground operation in the Gaza Strip.
In response, the US brought together a 10-nation coalition against the government in Sana'a led by the Ansarallah movement — dubbed the Houthis by the West. However, the coalition includes only one Arab state, Bahrain, while Yemen's other neighbors have so far hesitated to join the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian. Could they jump on Washington's bandwagon anytime soon?
"It's very interesting to see what the surrounding states will do, because, of course, we have Saudi Arabia trying to defeat the Houthis since 2015, which resulted in a lot of economic suffering and instability from Saudi Arabia," Susli told Sputnik. "And only now have they finally made some kind of a ceasefire or peace treaty with Iran and they both joined BRICS. I don't know if Saudi Arabia is going to be willing to jeopardize that, to stand with the United States in fighting the Houthis in this war, especially because it's going to be perceived in the entire region as Saudi Arabia siding with Israel, because what is happening right now is the Houthis are not attacking the vessels that are not related to Israel."
Observers say the US may resort to attacking Yemen launch sites, as they did previously in 2016. So far the Biden administration has been reluctant to take direct military action against the Houthis, who its claims are backed by Iran. The Yemeni movement issued a stark warning to the US-led naval task force on December 20.
"America's announcement of the establishment of the Coalition of Shame will not prevent us from continuing our military operations… This is a moral and humanitarian position that we will not abandon, no matter the sacrifices it costs us," Ansarallah spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti tweeted on December 19.
"It's interesting to see the United States put itself in harm's way in this way and try to launch a war already, because, you know, it's quite blatant that they're doing this for Israel and not for the United States," Susli said. "And it's going to open up their ranks in Syria and Iraq to even more massive attacks. They're basically sitting ducks in the Middle East right now."
The US is already overstretched by its proxy war in Ukraine, unprecedented military deployment in the Middle East and the Biden administration's push to arm the island of Taiwan in defiance of Beijing's warnings. The Yemeni blockade of the Red Sea as well as a potential threat of the Middle Eastern conflict spiraling out of control may result in a new oil crisis to which the US is not ready, Susli said.
US oil reserves are at 40-year low even though the nation has stepped up oil production over the past several months. The Biden administration has repeatedly dipped into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to help limit soaring fuel prices after the West slapped energy sanctions on Russia.
The SPR currently holds around 352 million barrels, less than half of 2010 highs. While the Biden administration is scrambling to refill it as fast as possible, it faces limits on how much crude can be funneled into the reserve of three million barrels per month, according to some estimates.
"It only takes for the oil to stop flowing to Europe and the US for the whole war machine to grind to a halt," said Susli. "The reason why the US oil reserves are down to such a level is because they've been forced to supply Europe with a lot of energy because they have blocked the Russians from being able to do so. So, this is the situation they're faced in. I think if other countries around the world are looking at the state that the United States is in, and if they start this offensive against Yemen, I wonder what will happen if there's a third conflict, for example, that could happen in which China invades Taiwan or anything in the east. The United States, with all its bravado, says, 'Yes, we can take on all of these wars at the same time.' But I don't think that that's true. I think that this is false bravado."
US ‘Trapped’ in Red Sea, Should Prepare for Gibraltar Strait’s ‘Closure’ - IRGC
By Ilya Tsukanov
The US set to work this week assembling a coalition to secure the Red Sea for shipping amid unrelenting hijacking and missile attacks against Israeli-tied commercial cargoes by Yemen’s Houthi militias against the backdrop of the Gaza crisis. Now, Iran, leader of the regional ‘Axis of Resistance’ coalition, has stepped in with a warning of its own.
The United States and its allies are “trapped” in the Red Sea and should prepare for the closure of waterways stretching all the way to the western gates of the Mediterranean Sea, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Chief of Staff Mohammad Reza Naqdi has warned.
“With the continuation of the crimes [in Gaza], the United States and its allies should await the birth of new powers of resistance and the closure of the rest of the waterways and roads to them,” Naqdi said at a ceremony commemorating Hasan Irlu, a late IRGC commander and former Iranian ambassador to Yemen.
“Yesterday the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz was a nightmare for them, today the Bab al-Mandab Strait and the Red Sea have trapped them, and with the continuation of these crimes, they will soon await the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, [the Strait of] Gibraltar and other waterways,” the commander added. “Oppression that has gone too far should await the storm,” he warned.
“The Zionist regime and the United States have gone mad due to the severity of the crimes and brutality they have committed, and they cannot even recognize their own interests,” Naqdi suggested, saying the two powers seem incapable of “learning from past events.”
“If not for the severity of their past crimes in Lebanon, Hezbollah would not be able to attack Israel on a daily basis…If they had not caused a bloodbath in Palestine in the past, Hamas would not have been able to pull the sword on them so powerfully today. If it wasn’t for their heinous crimes in Iraq and the Abu Ghraib torture center and the bloodiness launched by Daesh*, Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces would not have been created to hit America over the head on a daily basis. If they didn’t drop so many bombs in the markets of Saada and Sanaa, Ansar Allah [the Houthis, ed.] would not have reached the status and authority they have in Yemen and been able to close the Red Sea,” the senior IRGC officer said.
Naqdi did not elaborate on what kinds of operations specifically may be taken to close regional waterways to US forces and their allies. However, US media and news agencies immediately interpreted the commander’s words as an explicitly Iranian “threat” to “close the Mediterranean.”
The Biden administration Friday accused Iran of being “deeply involved in planning the operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea” as part of a “long-term material support and encouragement of the Houthis’ destabilizing actions in the region.”
Iran has been open about its political and moral sympathies for and support for the Houthis, but has consistently denied many years of claims by US officials of the provision of material or military support to the Yemeni militia since its rise to power over much of the country in late 2014.
That said, the Houthis are often mentioned by Iranian leaders and commentators as members of the Axis of Resistance, a loose, informal and unofficial political and military coalition opposed to Israel and American imperialism in the Middle East. Syria, Hezbollah, and Palestinian militias in Gaza are also typically listed as members of the informal grouping.
Naqdi’s remarks come against the background of growing tensions in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden as the US works to assemble a multinational coalition consisting mostly of NATO nations to try to secure the waterways after a month of Houthi hijackings and missile attacks against Israeli-owned commercial ships, as well as vessels thought to be heading to or from the Jewish State. The attacks have had a severe impact on Israel’s southern ports, and have prompted a handful of powerful international shipping concerns to stop the transit of any commercial cargoes through the Red Sea.
The nascent US-led coalition has already run into difficulties, with some allies committing just handfuls of ship-less seamen, and others deciding to sit out the US military adventure altogether, preferring any naval assets they have in the region to go it alone.
Information Clearing House – December 24, 2023
Yemen Ready to Stare Down a New Imperial Coalition
By Pepe Escobar
No one ever lost money betting on the ability of the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder to construct a “coalition of the willing” whenever faced with a geopolitical quandary.
In every case, duly covered by the reigning “rules-based international order”, “willing” applies to vassals seduced by carrots or sticks to follow to the letter the Empire’s whims.
Cue to the latest chapter: Coalition Genocide Prosperity, whose official – heroic – denomination, a trademark of the Pentagon’s P.R. wizards, is “Operation Prosperity Guardian”, allegedly engaged in “ensuring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.”
Translation: this is Washington all but declaring war on Yemen’s Ansarullah. An extra US destroyer has already been dispatched to the Red Sea.
Ansarullah sticks to its guns and is by no means intimidated. The Houthi military have already stressed that any attack on Yemeni assets or Ansarullah missile launch sites would color the entire Red Sea literally Red.
The Houthi military not only reaffirmed it has “weapons to sink your aircraft carriers and destroyers” but made a stunning call to both Sunnis and Shi’ites in Bahrain to revolt and overthrow their King, Hamad al-Khalifa.
As of Monday, even before the start of the operation, the Eisenhower aircraft carrier was around 280 km off the closest Ansarullah controlled latitudes. Houthis have Zoheir and Khalij-e-Fars anti-ship ballistic missiles with a range of 300 to 500 km.
Ansarullah Supreme Political Council member Muhammad al-Bukhaiti felt compelled to re-stress the obvious: “Even if America succeeds in mobilizing the entire world, our operations in the Red Sea will not stop unless the massacre in Gaza stops. We will not give up the responsibility of defending the Moustazafeen (oppressed ones) of the Earth.”
The world better get ready: “Aircraft carrier sunk” may become the new 9/11.
Shipping in the Red Sea Remains Open
Weapons peddler Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin, in his current revolving door position as head of the Pentagon, is visiting West Asia – mostly Israel, Qatar and Bahrain – to promote this new “international initiative” for patrolling the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb strait (which links the Arabian Sea to the Red Sea) and the Gulf of Aden.
As al-Bukhaiti remarked, Ansarullah’s strategy is to target any ship navigating the Red Sea linked to Israeli companies or supplying Israel – something that for the Yemenis demonstrates their complicity with the Gaza genocide. That will only stop when the genocide stops.
With a single move – a de facto maritime blockade – Ansarullah proved that the King is Naked: Yemen has done more in practice to defend the Palestinian cause than most of the key regional players put together. Incidentally, they were all ordered by Netanyahu in public to shut up. And they did.
It’s quite instructive to once again follow the money. Israel has been hit very hard. The port of Eilat is virtually closed, and its income fell by 80%.
For instance, Taiwanese shipping giant Yang-Ming Marine Transport Corporation originally planned to re-route its Israel-bound cargo to the port of Ashdod. Then it cut off any shipments to any Israeli destination.
It’s no wonder Yoram Sebba, President of the Israel Chamber of Shipping, revealed himself to be puzzled by Ansarullah’s “complex” tactics and “unrevealed” criteria that have imposed “total uncertainty”. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have also been caught in the Yemeni net.
It’s crucial to keep in perspective that Ansarullah only blocks ships that are going to Israel. The bulk of maritime shipping in the Red Sea remains wide open.
So shipping giant Maersk’s decision not to use the Red Sea, alongside other global shipping behemoths, may be pushing the envelope too fast – as in nearly begging for a US-led patrol to be in effect.
Enter CTF 153
So far, on one side we have Yemen virtually ruling the Red Sea. On the other side, we find UAE-Saudi-Jordan tandem, in the form of an – alternative – cargo land corridor set up from the port of Jebel Ali in the Persian Gulf across Saudi Arabia to Jordan and then Israel.
The corridor uses logistical tech from Trucknet: that’s truck-based overland connectivity in practice, reducing transport time from 14 days via the Red Sea to a maximum of 4 days on the road, 300 trucks a day, everyday.
Jordan of course is in, operating the trans-shipment from the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
The overarching framework for all this is the
One Israel plan, enthusiastically promoted by Netanyahu, whose key aim is a link with the Arabian peninsula and most of all the NEOM tech metropolis to be built theoretically up to 2039 in the northwestern Tabuk province in Saudi Arabia, north of the Red Sea, east of Egypt across the Gulf of Aqaba, and south of Jordan.
NEOM is MbS’s project to modernize the country, which is incidentally bound to feature Israel-operated AI cities.
This is what Riyadh is really betting on, much more than developing closer relations with Iran under the framework of BRICS+. Or to care about the future of Palestine.
On the planned naval blockade of Yemen though, the Saudis were way more circumspect. Even as Tel Aviv directly asked the White House to do something, anything, Riyadh “advised” Washington to exercise some restraint.
Yet as few things matter most for the Straussian neocon psychos who currently direct US policy than to protect the trade interests in the Red Sea of its aircraft-carrier in West Asia, the decision to set up a “coalition” was all but inevitable.
Enter the latest – actually fourth – incarnation of the Combined Maritime Force (CMF): a multinational coalition from 39 nations established in 2002 and led by the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
The task force already exists: it’s CTF 153, focusing on “international maritime security and capacity building efforts in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden”. That’s the basis for Coalition Genocide Prosperity.
Members of CTF 153 include, apart from the usual suspects US, UK, France and Canada, Europeans such as Norway, Italy, Netherlands and Spain, superpower Seychelles and Bahrain (the Fifth Fleet element).
Saudi Arabia and UAE, crucially, are not members. They know, after a seven-year war, when they were part of another “coalition” (the US was sort of “leading from behind”) what it means to fight Ansarullah.
All Aboard the Northern Sea Route
If the Red Sea situation turns really red, it will instantly shatter the Riyadh-Sanaa ceasefire. The White House and the US Deep State simply do not want a peace deal. They want Saudi Arabia at war with Yemen.
The Red Sea turned red will also send the global energy crisis into a tailspin. After all at least four million barrels of oil and 12% of total global seaborne-trade to the West transits the Bab al-Mandeb every single day.
So once again we have graphic confirmation that the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder only calls for ceasefires when it’s losing badly: see the Ukraine case.
Yet no ceasefire in Gaza – supported by the overwhelming majority if UN member-states – runs the risk of metastasizing into an expansion of the war in West Asia.
That may fit into the clumsy imperial rationale of setting West Asia on fire to disturb China’s commercial BRI drive and the entry of Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE into the expanded BRICS next month. Simultaneously, and in tune with the absence of real strategic planning in Washington, that does not take into consideration an array of appalling, unintended consequences.
So according to imperial optics, the only path ahead is further militarization – from the Mediterranean to the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Aqaba, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. That fits exactly into the framework of the War of Economic Corridors.
An axiom should be set in stone: Washington would rather bet on a possible, deep global recession than simply allowing a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The recession may well turbo-charge a widespread economic collapse of the collective West, and an even more rapid rise of multipolarity.
To offer much needed relief of so much insanity: almost casually, President Putin recently remarked that the Northern Sea Route is now becoming a more efficient maritime trade corridor than the Suez Canal.
Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian journalist and geopolitical analyst.
Iranian New Agency – December 24, 2023
Tehran International Conference on Palestine kicks off
Tehran, IRNA – Tehran International Conference on Palestine has started in Iran’s capital today with representatives from over 50 countries in attendance.
Hosted by Iran’s Foreign Ministry, the single-day event addresses the latest developments in occupied Palestine.
The attendees who are a group of former and present diplomats are to exchange views on the political and legal impacts of the Gaza war.
The participants will also examine the avenues for an immediate halt to the crimes committed in Palestine.
The death toll in Gaza has reportedly surpassed 20,000.
The United Nations Security Council has finally passed a resolution on the ongoing Israeli onslaught against Gaza, demanding increased aid deliveries to the besieged region.
https://en.irna.ir/news/85330383/Tehran-International-Conference-on-Palestine-kicks-off
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