Israel is learning the lesson so many other countries have learned the last few decades: saying you’re going to wipe out guerrillas is much easier than actually doing it.
Following the implementation of a four-day truce in Gaza, the Israeli media is flush with reports that Hamas remains strong after 49 days of fighting, and that the Israeli military is losing the war.
After the 7 October Hamas attack on Israeli settlements surrounding the Gaza strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to eliminate Hamas.
But despite Israel’s horrific bombing campaign and ground operation in Gaza that has killed some 15,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, the Israeli media is reporting that Hamas remains in control of the conflict.
Following the release of the first batch of Israelis held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hebrew language Channel 12said that on 25 November, “Whoever is in a hurry to mourn Hamas should look at this day to understand that this is not the reality. After 49 days of fighting, Hamas has proven that it is still strong, and that it still controls the Gaza Strip.”
The channel noted that Hamas successfully completed the exchange of captives, including one held by another Palestinian faction, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, despite claims it had lost control over its fighters and cells. “After all this, the scene of Hamas kneeling is still a long way off,” the channel added.
The Israeli channel’s military affairs correspondent, Nir Dvory, said that the Hamas movement “has not collapsed yet,” noting that the Israeli army “failed to liquidate the movement’s officials” whom it declared targets of its operations.
The warmongering Biden administration backs Israel in eliminating Gaza, but the cost to the U.S. in munitions and equipment may match their failed war in Ukraine — and the Public Relations cost is far greater — article
One of our readers is dismissive saying: “Egypt is poor and backward, with low educational standards, especially for women. Other Middle Eastern countries, including Gaza, are way ahead (ahead of us too but that’s not hard).”
Well, the unemployment rate in Egypt is a modest 7.06% in 2023 and streets in Cairo look thriving with happy people, but you be the judge.
The leader of President Zelensky’s party in the Ukrainian parliament has officially confirmed what many of us have been slandered and smeared for saying for months: that there was a peace deal in the works in the early days of the war in Ukraine if Kyiv would just commit to Ukrainian neutrality, but the deal was abandoned under pressure from western powers.
If you’re ever accused of being a Russian propagandist for pointing out obvious evidence of western malfeasance in Ukraine, don’t worry, wait long enough and a Ukrainian official will eventually come out and prove you right by saying exactly what you said.
And now Washington is starting to push Kyiv to negotiate an end to the fighting while Ukraine’s commander-in-chief calls the war a “stalemate”. Ukraine will surely wind up having to relinquish a lot more than it otherwise would have if it had been allowed to take the peace deal offered at the beginning of the conflict.
All that death and destruction, for what? For nothing. It was all pointless. An entire generation of young men thrown into the war machine in pointless bloodshed which could have been easily avoided except for the US empire’s desire to “bleed Russia” and advance its geostrategic objectives in Europe and Asia.
From Ukraine to Gaza, the US imperial war machine makes everything worse.
Yesterday, I was travelling back from a great event on Waiheke Island (remember, the one that activists tried to cancel), heading to the airport to catch a flight to Melbourne (where I am to speak at the launch of the FSU Australia today) when I received a very disturbing call.
A criminal barrister, Lucy, whom I had met before, started the phone call by telling me, ‘Yesterday, I was arrested for holding a sign at a pro-Palestinian protest.’ She certainly had my attention!
Yesterday at about 5pm I was arrested on Queen Street for peacefully protesting a pro-Palestine rally. I had popped out to grab coffee after being in a work meeting for the afternoon and I saw the protest occurring on Queen Street. I walked into a nearby shop, purchased an A2 piece of paper and wrote “SELECTIVE CONDEMNATION OF GENOCIDE IS EVIL” on it with a marker pen. I then stood on the pavement on Queen Street as the protesters walked past and held the sign above my head. I was silent and peaceful, and several metres away from them.
Immediately I was accosted by a group of nearby police officers who grabbed my sign off me and tore it up. They physically manhandled me and attempted to push me away from where I was standing.
They refused to give my sign back and threatened to arrest me for breach of the peace and failing to comply with the lawful order of a police officer if I didn’t move on. As a criminal defence lawyer I was unfazed by this because I knew that I wasn’t breaking any law. (I was not carrying an Israeli flag or any other indication of being pro-Israel and because they had taken my sign there was no indication at this point what my views even were. I was just another person on the street.) It was then that the cops grabbed me from behind, handcuffed me and arrested me. All of this is on video. They then locked me in a police van.
One thing I found disturbing is that the cops were completely unfazed at me recording their police ID numbers or at arresting me even when they knew I had the means to identify them. They let me go as soon as I undertook not to return on that day. (I explained that I was only prepared to make such an undertaking because I had to get back to a work meeting, and that otherwise I would gladly stay in their van.) This shows that they didn’t care whether they had any chance of successfully prosecuting me or not. They even offered to give me information on how to lay a complaint.
“This is an appalling story, that NZ Police arrested someone for peacefully holding up a sign, on the basis that it might upset the protesters. This is a sign that our right to freedom of expression remains under threat by the establishment. It is also difficult not to conclude that if roles of counter-protester and protest cause had been reversed, the Police would have never ever acted the way they did.”
Our team is working hard on this case. Here’s what we’re doing today:
1. Lodging a complaint with the Independent Police Conduct Authority;
2. Challenging the Auckland District Commander for an explanation of how her officers could abuse Lucy’s speech rights in this way;
3. Contacting the Police Commissioner to raise concerns at yet another example of Police in New Zealand failing to respect basic civil liberties;
4. Meeting with lawyers to assess whether criminal or civil proceedings are the best path to ensure justice.
It is exactly for moments like this that the Free Speech Union exists. We cannot let disregard for speech rights become the norm.
When Lucy came to us, she knew that we would have her back in this case. And she was right.
Lucy responded exactly in the right way when she heard speech she disagreed with — she used counter-speech. And for that, she was arrested. Is this New Zealand now?
I hope you’ll help us make sure the message is clear — there will be accountability for police who fail to respect these basic rights.
In December 1953, the CEOs of America’s leading tobacco companies cast aside competitive rancor and gathered at New York City’s Plaza Hotel to confront a menace to their incredibly profitable industry. An emergent body of science published in elite medical journals cast doubt on the safety of cigarettes and threatened to destroy a half-century of corporate success. Joining them at the Plaza was John W. Hill, the president of America’s top public relations firm, Hill & Knowlton. Hill would later prove a decisive savior.
Hill had closely studied Edward Bernays, whose work on propaganda in the 1920s and 1930s laid the foundation of modern public relations and defined common techniques to manipulate popular opinion. Hill understood that any traditional campaign would fail to sway society, which perceived advertising as little more than corporate propaganda. Effective public relations required comprehensive off-stage management of the media. At its best, it left no fingerprints.
Instead of ignoring or denigrating new data that found tobacco dangerous, Hill proposed the opposite: embrace science, trumpet new data, and demand more, not less research. By calling for more research, which they would then fund, tobacco companies could harness academic scientists in a battle to confront a major scientific controversy and amplify skeptical views of the relationship between tobacco and disease. Such a scheme would let companies shroud themselves in doubt and uncertainty—core principles of the scientific process, in which every answer leads to new questions.
Hill & Knowlton’s campaign for the five largest US tobacco companies corrupted science and medicine for decades to follow, laying the foundation for financial conflicts of interest in science, as other industries mimicked tobacco’s techniques to protect their own products from government bans and regulations—later, from consumer lawsuits. While tactics have varied over time, the core strategy has changed little since tobacco wrote the playbook, providing a menu of techniques now employed across industries.
