The Free

Israel strike that killed 106 people in Gaza ‘apparent war crime’: Probe by HRW

from thefreeonline on 5th April 2024 by Al Jazeera News

Human Rights Watch says 54 children among dead in ‘unlawful’ attack on residential building on October 31.

In the rubble of the Engineers’ Building, Karam al-Sharif, an UNRWA employee, holds one of his 18-month-old twin boys killed in the October 31 Israeli airstrike on the building that killed at least 106 civilians, including 5 of his children and 5 other relatives…. thanks to – Mohammed Dahman/AP Photo

An “unlawful” Israeli air attack that killed 106 people in a residential building in central Gaza on October 31, 2023, was an “apparent war crime”, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

The inquiry was based on testimonies from 16 people the group spoke to between January and March, satellite images, dozens of photographs and videos from the site, as well as those shared on social media, the international rights group said on Thursday as it released the findings of its investigation.

It called on governments to suspend weapons transfers to Israel and support the International Criminal Court’s (ICC’s) investigation in Palestine, saying the attack was among the “deadliest single incidents for civilians” since Israel’s war on Gaza started in October.

Palestinians search for survivors in the rubble of a building in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip, on October 31, 2023, amid relentless Israeli bombardment [Mahmud Hams/AFP]

Witnesses said 350 or more people were staying in the Engineers’ Building, south of the Nuseirat refugee camp, when four aerial munitions struck it that afternoon within about 10 seconds, without warning. At least 150 people were seeking shelter after fleeing their homes elsewhere in Gaza.

The building was demolished.

The New York-based group said it found no evidence of a military target in the vicinity of the building when the attack took place, which according to HRW made the air attack “unlawfully indiscriminate”.

The false red flag: a repugnant racket

by Paul Cudenec Anyone wishing to understand what lay behind the brutal political repression and totalitarian industrial slavery imposed by the Bolsheviks would do well to read the work of historian Antony C. Sutton, notably his book Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution. [73] He shows, with solid evidence, that the communist seizure of powerwas encouraged and funded by financial interests outside Russia.

This is not to say that there were not genuine revolutionary forces at play in the country and that the tsarist regime would not have been toppled in any case.

But the specific role of the Bolsheviks was to seize power, crush the genuine popular revolt and ensure that Russia was turned into an authoritarian centralised state – under the ultimate control of these financial interests – which could then impose their Great Project.

This project was, of course, all about making money.

Communist Russia was regarded as a “golden opportunity” [74] in certain circles.

An enciphered telegram sent by David Francis, US ambassador in Petrograd (St Petersburg), a year before the revolution began, is very telling for a couple of reasons.

Firstly because he sent it to the State Department in Washington, DC, to be deciphered and forwarded to Frank Arthur Vanderlip, the chairman of the National City Bank in New York, thus indicating which power he was truly serving.

Secondly because of his message to the banker: “Opportunities here during the next ten years very great along state and industrial financing”. [75]

This wouldn’t have been the case if the genuine social movement, of which Voline was part, had won the day and managed to place power and wealth in Russia in the hands of the Russian people.

So the international bankers clearly had an important incentive in crushing any real revolutionaries and ensuring that their opportunity-providing placemen were firmly in charge.

Sutton in fact mentions Voline in his book and explains that “the betrayal of the Russian Revolution” which the latter witnessed first-hand was created by “the new powerbrokers of another corrupt political system… the ambitions of a few Wall Street financiers who, for their own purposes, could accept a centralized tsarist Russia or a centralized Marxist Russia but not a decentralized free Russia”. [76]

We are generally taught that there is a fundamental dichotomy between state control of industry and private control – state ownership of the kind exercised under “communism” would necessarily be to the disavantage of those who profit under “capitalism”, we are made to believe.

But the public-private model tested in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and now championed by the likes of the WEF, should allow us to see through this illusion.

Like fascism, communism provided financiers with the authoritarian state muscle to impose their industrial development projects on people who would not otherwise have gone along with them.

Sutton muses about the apparent contradiction of somebody like George Foster Peabody, deputy chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, being an enthusiast for government ownership of railways.

He argues: “Given the dominant political influence of Peabody and his fellow financiers in Washington, they could by government control of railroads more easily avoid the rigors of competition.

“Through political influence they could manipulate the police power of the state to achieve what they had been unable, or what was too costly, to achieve under private enterprise.

“In other words, the police power of the State was a means of maintaining a private monopoly… The idea of a centrally planned socialist Russia must have appealed to Peabody. Think of it – one gigantic State monopoly!” [77] […]
The false red flag: a repugnant racket