Pictures and video of the Iron Dome in action have made appearances across the news and social media apps since Hamas terrorists launched an attack against Israel on Oct. 7. It’s a powerful system, but instead of smart rockets, what if there was a system that used lasers instead? That is exactly what Rafael Advanced Defense Systems’ latest aerial defense system, the Iron Beam, is capable of.
Roughly half of President Biden’s recent budget request for more than $105 billion for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and border security is dedicated to weapons sales. Nothing screams Christian values like massacres and mass weapons sales.
Every day the Palestinian civilian death toll is rising dramatically as Israel continues with its genocidal bombing and ground invasion of Gaza, and as settler and military violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank intensifies. “It’s a closure, it’s a curfew, in many places in the West Bank,” Issa Amro says. “It’s not normal life these days. Soldiers are everywhere, settlers are everywhere, people are afraid to leave their homes, they don’t go to work, they don’t go to school, they don’t go to universities.” After losing touch with Issa during the day because he was escaping from settlers who were chasing him in Hebron, we managed to reconnect over the phone and record a nine minute conversation about the hell working people in Palestine are going through right now and what their fellow workers in the US and Canada can do to stop the slaughter. Issa Amro is a Palestinian human rights defender living in Hebron, in the Occupied West Bank. He is the co-founder and former coordinator of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. Days prior to this recording, Issa was evicted from his home in Hebron and tortured by Israeli troops.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken isheaded to Israelto meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the war in Gaza and what will come afterwards if Israel is successful in rooting out Hamas.
The US is flying drones over the Gaza Strip to help gather intelligence on the locations of hostages taken by the Hamas Movement and other Palestinian armed factions during the October 7 surprise attack, Reuters reported on November 3, citing a pair of United States officials.
Everyone has spoken out about the IOC, and so will we (Today in the “It’s different” section — perhaps a contender for the title of champion. The International Olympic Committee warned athletes against discrimination against Israel, DPA reports.
From grandstanding in the rubble after our fire in Lāhainā to posing on top of a tank in Palestine, Harvest pastor Greg Laurie is the poster boy for white Christianity in occupied lands. I went to Kumulani Chapel for over a decade (through its transition to Harvest). I got my undergraduate degree in religious studies… let me tell you something: this is what settler-colonial theology looks like. The corporate religion espoused by Harvest is performative and littered with internal contradictions; it is quite explicitly a demonstration of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”. As a friend of mine noted, Laurie “was one of the early Trojan horse pastors that dressed Christofascist bullshit in a hip new package”. His church serves as a superstructure to reproduce Settler-Colonial/Capitalist society.
A week ago I posted on this page an admission by IDF Brigadier General Barak Hiram that he himself gave the orders to use tank’s fire in hostage situations in Kibbutz Be-eri. It becomes evidently clear that many of the Israeli casualties in Be-eri as well as other places, were the outcome of Israel prioritising killing Hamas militants over saving the lives of hostages (Hannibal Directive). In practice it was Israel that was responsible for many Israeli civilians fatalities and it is Israel reckless operation and deployment of tanks and anti tank missiles in hostages situation that is responsible for the devastation in Kibbutz Be-eri and other 7 October Gaza Ring theatres.
Disturbingly Israel then brought foreign press to these devastated scenes and pointing at Hamas barbarism knowing very well that it was the deployment of Israeli tanks, anti tank missiles and heavy machine-guns that was responsible for the carnage and the civilian’s death…
Today we learned that an Israeli battalion commander colonel Salman Habka died in Gaza yesterday. Colonel Habka was fighting in Be-eri on 7 October and he confirmed to Israeli Ynet that IDF Bri. Genn Barak Hiram gave him the order to shoot tank shells into the Kibbutz buildings.
“In an interview held after the battle in Be-eri in which he (Col Habka) participated, the late Habka said: ‘The tanks are here, the tanks are near us. I arrive in Be-eri under the command of Bri. Gen. You Barak Hiram and the first thing he ordered me to do was to fire a shell inside a house. The first question that comes to your mind is if there are hostages there. We did all the preliminary actions before we decided to fire a shell into a house.” (ynet 2/112023)
The question you may want to ask is what were those ‘preliminary actions,’ because many hostages were found dead after this tank’s shelling… around 83 Israelis died in Be-eri…
In an interview after the battle in Bari in which he participated, the late Habaka said: “The tanks are here, the tanks are next to us. I arrive in Bari, pass Brigadier General Barak Hiram and the first thing he demands of me is to fire a shell inside the house. The first question that comes to you is if there are any hostages there. We did all the preliminary operations before we decided to fire a shell into a house
As soon as we fired shells into houses, we managed to go from house to house, to free the hostages, and that was basically how the fighting was until the evening, inside the settlement and in the streets,” the late Habaka continued. “I understand one thing. As soon as people hear the grubs of the tanks, they suddenly have a moment of security.”
The NYPD used its drones 13 times to make 239 arrests during the demonstrations that erupted last week over the Hamas-Israel war and could bust more people caught breaking the law on video, NYPD officials said.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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