This week, as Israel’s military prepared to launch a full-scale attack on Rafah, Israel was hit with a tidal wave of bad news.
Legally, politically, economically and militarily, the Netanyahu regime has had a really bad week.
Freed Hostages
This week, Israelis celebrated the liberation of two hostages seized by Palestinian militants on October 7.
While they rejoiced, however, much of the world focused on the barbaric means by which Israel’s military freed the hostages.
The operation to liberate the hostages was conducted under cover of an hour-long bombardment of Rafah. Palestinians in Rafah said two mosques and several houses were hit by Israeli warplanes, tanks and ships, causing widespread panic among people who had been asleep. At least sixty-seven Palestinians were massacred.
Israel has now freed a grand total of three hostages – the same number of Israeli hostages whom Israeli forces shot dead on December 15 of last year. On that day, three shirtless Israelis waving a white flag were gunned down in Gaza by Israeli soldiers who, according to CNN, “felt threatened”.
In related news, the New York Times reported last week that Israeli intelligence officers had concluded that at least 30 of the remaining 136 hostages had died since the start of the war. The causes of their deaths remain unclear, but Hamas has claimed repeatedly that Israeli hostages in its custody were killed in Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
Given the savagery of Israel’s air strikes, it would be surprising if Israel had not killed at least some of its own hostages.
A cascade of bad news
While Israelis focused on the freeing of two hostages, Israel’s legal troubles mounted.
South Africa’s government announced that it had filed an “urgent request” to the International Court of Justice to intervene before Israel launched a full-scale assault on Rafah.
In a marked departure from his widely condemned inaction, Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, issued a stern warning to Israel’s government that those who violate the laws of war “will be held accountable”.
Also, a Dutch appellate Court ruled that the pro-Israel government of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte was prohibited from sending F35 parts to Israel due to the serious risk that they would be used in the commission of grave violations of international humanitarian law.
On the economic front, the IMF and World Bank warned that Israel’s war on Palestinians had already damaged the economies of the Middle East and North Africa, and that an escalation of the war would threaten the global financial system.
Militarily, Israel sustained further casualties in Gaza (including the commander of the Gaza Division’s Southern Brigade) and on the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah appeared to ramp up its daily attacks on Israel as Israel’s assault on Rafah loomed.
On the public relations front, a new Angus Reid poll revealed that a plurality of Canadians (41%) believe that Israel is committing genocide. Less than one-third (32%) of Canadians disagree. Among Liberal Party supporters, the percentage of those who believe Israel is committing genocide is even higher (44%).
Given the strong pro-Israel bias of Canada’s corporate media, the Angus Reid poll constitutes a stunning rebuke of Justin Trudeau’s lavish support for Israel.
I discuss all these developments and more in the video below. I also revisit the prediction I made last November that Israel, America’s ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier‘, is heading toward a strategic defeat:
It’s very worrying though. Even if Hezbollah has the capacity of thousands of missiles, if it’s drawn into a full-scale war with Israel it will draw in the United States and possibly Iran. It will be very bad for people throughout the middle east and possibly beyond. It is unfathomable that so-called liberal governments like Canada and the US continue to provide weapons to Israel and have cut off aid to UNRWA.
Thank you for your work Dimitri. There’s so much propaganda out there trying to obscure what’s going on.
Thank you Dimitri as ever, for being regrettably, a voice in the wilderness of modern geopolitics. And there is no doubt that, as time moves swiftly on, your voice, which is so much needed and more and more appreciated, is growing stronger and stronger as the geopolitical circus grows ever more savage and predictable.