Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative MatrixA new report from the Israeli outlet Haaretz titled “IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive” confirms what independent outlets like The Grayzone and Electronic Intifada have been getting smeared as antisemitic conspiracy theorists for saying this entire time: that many of the Israeli deaths on October 7 were the result of an IDF policy of deliberately firing on their own people to prevent them from being taken hostage by Hamas. Citing a “very senior IDF source,” Haaretz reports that Israeli troops responding to the Hamas attack were told “Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza,” and that “it was entirely clear what that message meant, and what the fate of some of the kidnapped people would be.” This acknowledgement flies in the face of everything the imperial media and western officials have been saying since October about these claims. Just last month State Department spokesman Matthew Miller acted as though journalist Sam Husseini was a raving lunatic for asking about the possible implementation of the Hannibal Directive on October 7. The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal notes that he was actually smeared as a “manipulator” by Haaretz itself back in November for his reporting on the evidence of IDF fire being behind many deaths during the attack. So I guess at this point we need to ask, which is it? Are mainstream Israeli media outlets now guilty of antisemitic Holocaust denialist blood libel conspiracy theories, or is it no longer an antisemitic Holocaust denialist blood libel conspiracy theory to say that this happened? ❖ A new report published in The Lancet medical journal titled “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential” highlights the fact that many times more people tend to be killed indirectly by things like starvation and disease as a result of recent conflicts than from direct military violence. The report says that as a “conservative” estimate of four such indirect deaths for every one direct death, a direct death count of 37,396 could wind up placing the actual total death count as a result of this onslaught at around 186,000. This would be about eight percent of the total population of Gaza. The Lancet notes that the number of reported direct deaths is “likely an underestimate” since thousands of bodies remain uncounted beneath the rubble in Gaza, and since Israel has destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure for counting the dead. So the real number of direct deaths is almost certainly much higher than 37,396, which means the real number of indirect deaths which could be conservatively inferred from this number would sit well into the hundreds of thousands. And that’s just if the killing stopped today. The real death toll is only going up. ❖ Foreign reporters now making their way into Rafah for the first time since the Israeli assault on the city began are now describing the place as a “flattened wasteland,” a “maze of rubble,” and “unrecognizable.” As Dr Assal Rad noted on Twitter, these reports come just days after the US State Department’s deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told the press “We continue to believe that any major military incursion into Rafah we would be opposed to, but yet, we have yet to see any kind of incursion to take place thus far.” If a military operation which turns a city into a flattened, unrecognizable wasteland of rubble isn’t considered a “major military incursion”, I think it’s fair to say that nothing would be. ❖ It’s so surreal how Americans watched undeniable evidence that the president doesn’t run America during the first presidential debate, and then went right back to arguing about who should be president as though this never happened. I mean, they watched it happen. Right in front of their faces. They saw clear, unequivocal evidence that the person who’s supposedly calling the shots in their country has a brain which does not work, which means the shots are necessarily being called by someone else. And yet here they are, still arguing over who should be president as though they didn’t just see the very premise of this argument exposed as complete nonsense. It’s like if a wife was talking to her husband, and then he told her “I’m not actually your husband, I’m a space alien,” and then he took off his mask and showed her his flying saucer, and then after he put his mask back on she asks him what he wants for dinner and reminds him they’re having drinks with the Millers on Friday. ❖ Inside Joe Biden there are two wolves fighting: a deranged imperialist wolf who wants to commit genocide and start World War Three, and a demented incontinent wolf who just wants to be welcomed into the sweet embrace of death. ❖ A liberal will tell you you’re crazy and unrealistic for saying revolution is the only path to meaningful change, and then say the only real path is to make sure their party never, ever loses an election in a system that’s arranged to ensure both parties lose half the time. _______________
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2024 Caitlin Johnstone |
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