QUOTABLE QUOTES: WORDS TO THE WISE

  

 

“A ceasefire is when others cease and Israel fires.—Francesca Albanese on the Israel/Gaza conflict.

 

“We are closer to death than to life.”—A Nasser Hospital medical staffer in Gaza commenting on his social media while the Israeli military shoot-up tent encampments on the hospital grounds. (July 17/25)

 

“The repairs that we carry out fall to pieces, patients get terrible infections, and they die. I have never had so many patients die because they can’t get enough food to recover…. The medical teams here have also been seeing a clear pattern of people being shot in certain body parts on different days, such as the head, legs or genitals, which seems to indicate deliberate targeting.”—Prof Nick Maynard a Oxford-based gastrointestinal surgeon currently in Gaza. The Telegraph, July 17/25)

 

“First of all, [the] real disgrace for the United Nations is that there are 60,000 people who have been killed in 20 months and Gaza has been turned into a meat grinder and it continues under our eyes, and while member states start uttering words of condemnation while trading with one hand in weapons and trading with goods and with the other. So, this is the real disgrace.”

—Francesca Albanese in response to quote from the poisonous toad Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon, calling her second three-year appointment as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories “a disgrace”.

 

“I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred... The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.”—Nelson Mandela on ending the system of apartheid (Afrikanns: “separateness”) and creating a democratic South Africa for all races. 

 

“The West has always a repetition of the very old habit to create some havoc, some mess and then to fish in the muddy waters.” 

—Russian Foreign Minister Sergi Lavrov from an Al Jazerra interview (December/2024)

 

Cheers, Jake. ________________________________________________

 

 

 

RANT: BULLS EYE!

  

 

FUN FACT: Professor Nick Maynard, a gastrointestinal surgeon from Oxford, England, who volunteered recently at Nassar Medical Centre in Khan Younis in southern Gaza reports: “The medical teams here have also been seeing a clear pattern of people being shot in certain body parts on different days, such as the head, legs or genitals, which seems to indicate deliberate targeting”. Since March, when Israel broke the fragile ceasefire, on average, over one-hundred Palestinians are killed by IDF shells and gunfire every day. Nearly one-thousand Palestinians have been killed seeking food aid at the Gazan Humanitarian Foundations’ (GHF) four feeding stations since late May when the organization began its operation, replacing UNRWA (United Nations Refugee and Works Agency), after Israel claimed the UN agency was infiltrated by Hamas militants. Since October 7/23, seventy-one children have died from starvation. 

  

“The [United Nations] Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) reported in June that the entire population is facing acute food shortages with more than one million people at risk of starvation. Children are dying from malnutrition and dehydration.” (Al Jazeera)

 

👉Congratulations, GHF! You’re lousy at feeding people and you're saving the IDF bullets. A win-win, wouldn’t you say?

In addition, over 5,500 Gazans have been wounded seeking food at the militarized aid stations. One commentator suggests the high number of casualties is a deliberate ploy by the IDF to overwhelm the already crippled Gazan health services with large numbers of casualties. Or they could just be doing some target practice. Hey. It’s war. Deal.

 

Cheers, Jake.

 

 

 

RANT: NO SWIMMING!

 

 

FUN FACT: On July 12/25 the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) issued a warning to Palestinians in Gaza: Swimming could prove hazardous to your health. Gazans are now forbidden to swim, fish or dive in the Mediterranean waters along their coastline. There had been some fishing and bathing activities occurring since October 7/23, but Israel decided to tighten the screws. Now, Gazans who live along the coast, who swam in the waters for a few minutes relief from the horror show Israel has made of their land, now put their lives at risk from drone attacks or shelling. Fishing, too, has been banned, ostensibly to prevent weapons smuggling.

BUT, more importantly, Canadian vacationers and sun-worshipers will be disappointed with the Government of Canada’s travel advisory: “Avoid all travel to the Gaza Strip due to the ongoing genocide military operation.” So, before you pack your Speedo and sunscreen, check the evolving situation in the Levant and perhaps make alternative plans this season, for example, an Egyptian or Moroccan holiday destination, perhaps? And, if everything goes according to plan, next year you may well find Gaza turned into a five-star travel destination with time-share deals, hotel accommodations, and Holy Land tour packages that suit every budget. Bon voyage!

 

Cheers, Jake.

 

 

RANT: ENOUGH ALREADY!

 

  

I’M SURE I SPEAK for most of the world’s population when I say I AM SO OVER, SO SICK-AND-TIRED of Donald Trump and the American project he’s steering down the drain, yelling like the captain on the Titanic: “Everything’s okay! Full steam ahead!” Trump 2.0 is like being stuck under a swarm of gnats in the middle of a swamp. Swat at them all you will, they’ll follow you everywhere with no end in sight. In his first term as president, Trump was at least entertaining. His asides and admonitions were crude but shades livelier than the pretty mouth noises most politicians make when they’re trying to convince you to take them seriously. In the States, especially, we see how many of them are bought off by this or that special interest or are led around by this or that unholy appetite or brain-dead belief system. And Trump was going to end all that, to "drain the swamp". Instead he's become a swamp creature.

Donald Trump is soooo last decade!

DURING his presidential campaign, he called himself the “peace president”, promising he would not start any new wars and would end the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine. He promised to cut Pentagon spending and focus his attention on the plight of the American working class, on job-creation, border security, reestablishing America’s industrial capacity, and so  on. Promises made; promises not kept and falling short of the mark by a country mile! In his foreign policy initiatives, every day, he and his team of incompetents seem to put their collective foot in it. Whether it’s his  erratic agenda with respect to Russia/Ukraine, or Gaza/Israel, or Iran, “Ch-eye-na”, etc. they are truly the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

 

TAKE RUSSIA, for instance. A nuclear-armed superpower, the Russians have repeatedly said that NATO in Ukraine poses an existential threat for them and is their reddest of red lines. President Putin has expressed, for years, Russia’s alarm over NATO’s inexorable march to the East, surrounding Russia’s borders with NATO-aligned states. Ukraine was the last straw. In mid-December 2021, President Putin spoke by phone with President Biden and came away convinced the U.S. president understood Russia’s legitimate* security concerns. In late December 2021, President Putin made a final entreaty to the United States to cease plans to admit Ukraine into the Western military alliance. Biden seems to have agreed, and Moscow was convinced they had a deal. But, much to President Putin’s and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s chagrin, in early January 2022 they learned the Biden administration had reversed its position and that missile emplacements, sanctions, and Ukraine’s NATO candidacy were still on the table. Left with no choice, in February Russia invaded.

We know that Britain’s PM, Boris Johnson, made a trip in March to Kiev and convinced Ukraine’s President Zelensky to tear up the treaty deal with Russia that was all but complete during peace talks held in Istanbul. The conflict could have ended in March 2022. Instead, the bloodshed continues with Russian forces poised to advance to the Dnieper River, and there are rumours of an impending evacuation of the Ukrainian government to Lviv in western Ukraine. 

 

    Remember this? We thought the bromance was over. Sigh.

All that is to say Trump could have deescalated the war and forced Zelensky to negotiate by stopping U.S. military aid and intelligence operations on Day One of his presidency. It was Biden’s war. Now it’s his, and Trump is not wearing it well. His policies in Ukraine are virtually identical to his predecessor: shipping arms and threatening sanctions. Instead of making a deal, he lectures the Russians, offering them nothing that would incentivize them to start serious negotiations. Yes, there are talks and diplomatic engagement between Russia and the United States—which is an improvement from Biden's presidency—but they’re mostly for show, with Trump’s carrot and stick negotiating tactics adding to the confusion. Everyone knows by now that it’s amateur night in Washington. This crew doesn’t know how to do diplomacy, and so the Russians see no diplomatic solution for the Ukraine problem; they will settle the matter on the battlefield. 

Daily, Ukraine continues to lose territory and its army is being methodically shredded by Russian forces. Trump’s arming of Kiev, even if he has arm-twisted the Europeans into paying for it, [Suckers! Ed.] will not change the battlefield’s ultimate trajectory, which is very much in Russia’s favour.

👉At 79, I think President Trump has lost his mojo. He may even be in the early stages of senility, and like Biden, that is a dangerous place for an American president to be. Dangerous for us and everyone, I mean.

👉I’ve left out a good many details in this short overview. But one of the irksome things about the whole affair is how Trump suckered everyone into thinking he was different from run-of-the-mill politicians. Voters in the U.S. believed he would end the war in Ukraine, a pledge he made often in his 2024 campaign. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Most of us are in the later category. And that’s just his Ukraine clusterfuck. Three-and-a half more years. Let’s hope we make it!

 

  

Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________

 

* Having been invaded via the plains of Ukraine several times in the last couple of centuries, it should be obvious how Moscow views, in particular, NATO emplacements of so-called ‘defensive’ long-range missiles abutting its soil. Not to mention troops.

 

    Tin Man: "Oh no, Dorothy! Look! It's Donald Trump! I hope he doesn't bite Toto!"

 

 

HOTEL GAZAFORNIA: YOU CAN CHECK OUT ANY TIME YOU LIKE, BUT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE

 

ADOLF HITLER AND HEINRICH HIMMLER must be jumping for joy and high-fiving amid the fires of Hell where their black souls are sequestered for an eternity or two. Why do I say this? Check out what an Israeli parliamentarian, a member in good standing in the Knesset, said last week. It’s a short clip at the 10:05 mark on Judge Napolitano’s go-to "Judging Freedom" YouTube channel. Judge Nap interviewed retired American diplomat Chas Freeman and asked him to comment on MP Zvika Fogel’s poisonous rant. Ambassador Freeman says:

 

“Well, it's both the best impersonation of a Nazi that I've ever seen and it does represent the government policy of Israel. That's why they're talking about building concentration camps as a way to expel  the Palestinians from that part of Palestine. Meanwhile, of course, while no one's watching, they're busily expelling everybody from the West Bank. There's quite an effort going on there to achieve what is called ‘transfer’, which is ethnic cleansing and expulsion. So, you know, one of the crazy things that's been going on is that normally when you deal with genocide, you have great trouble demonstrating intent, but [here] there's no question about the intent. You just heard it. That is, as I said, the best demonstration of Nazilike thinking that you could possibly imagine. And it is now the majority opinion in Israel.” (ret. U.S. Ambassador, Chas Freeman on the "Judging Freedom" podcast, 8 July 2025)

 

THE "CONCENTRATION CAMP" plan the ambassador mentions comes from the very real, recent proposal by Israel’s  Defence Minister, Israel Katz, to establish a “humanitarian city”, as he calls it, in the southern Gaza district of Rafah near the border with Egypt. The first stage of the plan is to entrap house several hundred thousand Palestinians from the local area inside a fenced off zone and keep them there until they ‘voluntarily’ choose to leave Gaza or until other arrangements can be made to “transfer” them abroad to a country willing to host them. [That's a war crime, the forced displacement of an indigenous population from their homeland. Ed.] To this end, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation will build feeding stations and work with “partners” to construct housing (tents, actually), water and sanitation facilities, medical clinics and even a school. It will be policed internally by mercenaries private contractors while outside the fence, IDF soldiers keep watch. The idea, according to Israel Katz*, is to screen all entrants, digitally identify and “tag” them, and arrest any Hamas militants that may be uncovered during the screening process. Food and humanitarian aid would, of course, be distributed inside the camps. And, one more thing: once you enter the camps, you can never leave (except for 'voluntary' migration outside of Gaza and the state of Israel).

 

    "Barbed Wire" by David Ludwig Bloch

THIS FIRST prison camp will be a demonstration model where all the kinks in the system can be worked out. Minister Katz envisions that the place, and others like it, will eventually come to house two million Palestinian Gazans. These are “transition” camps, temporary stops for inmates as they make their way out the door and out of Gaza forever. Where they will go is a good question. Recall that in 2024 Egypt constructed a sixteen-square-kilometer fenced-off area abutting the Rafah Crossing into Gaza. I’d like to think they cleared the land for vegetable and flower gardens but it’s probably more likely the Egyptian President El-Sisi cucked to pressure from the Biden administration and threats and cajolement (aka “bribes”) from the Israelis and new Trump administration to prepare for an eventual exodus into the Sinai of some or all of the Gazan population. And Egypt may not be the only potential 'landing pad' for all those Palestinians soon to be bottled up in concentration camps in southern Gaza. I read recently that Cyprus may be petitioned to set up reciprocal “transition” camps to help Israel offshore its unwanted millions. We’ll have to wait and see which governments cuck first to the U.S. and its Levantine pit bull. It should be noted: There’s a fair bit of walking around money to be had in offshore oil and gas fields. Will Israel work a deal with Cyprus to share in the petroleum profits with a quid pro quo that Cyprus take in Gazans? Stay tuned.

 

👉ONE HOLD-UP to Minister Gatz’s wet dream of Gaza ethnically cleansed of Palestinians is that he needs a sixty-day ceasefire with Hamas to give him time to build his “humanitarian city" that will be sited atop the ruins of Rafah. It should come as no surprise that the idea of screening and “concentrating” Gaza’s population into IDF-controlled camps doesn’t sit well with Hamas and, so far, there is no ceasefire agreed upon, though negotiations continue in Doha. If the camps are filled with non-combatants, it stands to reason that anyone outside the camps will be considered a militant, whether they are one or not. And it’s quite probable that many Palestinians will refuse to enter the camps because they see what fate has in store for them behind the wire, meaning they will be considered “militants” by the IDF and treated as legitimate targets. 

Ethnic cleansing is still very much on the agenda in Tel Aviv and in Washington. Recall that the American president mused earlier this year about "deporting" Palestinians from Gaza, taking over the Gaza Strip and turning it into a "Riviera of the Middle East", with "big and beautiful" condos and casinos.

 

Pipe dream though that is, there are serious players in West Asia and elsewhere who are interested in turning Israel and Gaza into an "energy and commercial hub" with rail lines, oil and gas pipelines, and shipping lanes linking India, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia Israeli ports⁺ and eastern Europe. The proposal by the Balsillie Paper think tank [see above link] envisions a rebuilt Gaza with Palestinians participating in an energy and commercial network (the "India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor"), and by having Gazans share in the growing regional prosperity, the besieged Palestinian enclave would stand a better chance at becoming a stable and peaceful entity. Growing indigenous Palestinian wealth is a legitimate goal which should be discussed and analyzed. But, I don't see the Israelis wanting to share their toys with the Palestinians. Do you? Their racist project of ethnic cleansing and genocide has gone too far. Too much blood has been spilled. And the IMEC corridor, should it ever come to pass, would bring onto the scene global financial interests and energy corporations whose bottom lines might not be in the best interests of Palestinians. So, there's that. If I were to hazard a guess, by the time either Trump or an IMEC consortium ever break ground to redevelop Gaza, there will be no Palestinians left; they will be gone, one way or another. 

👉BUT, FIRST THINGS FIRST. Minister Katz’s plan for a “humanitarian city” in Rafah, something Ambassador Freeman sardonically calls: “Auschwitz on the Mediterranean”, is still on the drawing board. How long it will stay there, we’ll have to wait and see. Don't forget, the defence minister needs a ceasefire so he can build his concentration camp that's slated to hold several-hundred-thousand Gazans. So far, no ceasefire is in the offing. 

👉Who would have imagined in this bright, new century of ours that descendants of survivors of the Holocaust would be complicit in creating the same type of system under which so many of their relatives and co-religionists were murdered by the Nazis during WWII? It's not exactly the Circle of Life, is it? (Circle of Death is more like it.)

 

    GHF aid station June 15, 2025. Chaos, Inc.

EACH DAY IN GAZA, dozens of people are killed by Israeli bombs and gunfire--often the figure is over 100 dead, mostly women and children. And since the end of May, around 780 Palestinians have been killed near the four Gazan Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) feeding stations and five-thousand-five-hundred have been wounded attempting to receive food aid.  What kind of humanitarian aid system is this, where people risk their lives for a box of food?! ANSWER: It's not humanitarian aid. It's cheese in a mousetrap, and there are so, so many hungry mice everywhere. As I mentioned in a previous post,  the GHF stations are purposely designed to induce stress and strife among Palestinians entering them, thus creating an inherently unstable environment where IDF troops are given license to fire on the crowds. But, I'm sure the "humanitarian city" Israel Gatz hopes to set up will be better organized and all the nutritional, medical, social, and psychological  needs of Palestinians living inside the wire will be met in a robust and forthright manner. 😝 Yeah, right. Fuck Israel.

 

Cheers, Jake. ____________________________________ 

 

* One Haaretz newspaper wag suggests calling it “Camp Israel” after the innovative and forward-thinking Israeli defence minister.

+ The main Israeli port of Haifa and a proposed Gazan port.  $$$$$$$$$$$$

 

    "Maus" by Art Spiegleman