Natural News issues statement on Hamas terror attack on Israel, bombings of Gaza, ethnic cleansing vs humanitarian principles

By healthranger // 2023-10-11

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From Mike Adams, editor of Natural News: We condemn in the strongest terms the terrorism attacks against Israel carried out by militant members of Hamas. Their actions targeting civilians were animalistic, barbaric and wholly incompatible with human civilization. The loss of innocent life among Israeli citizens is heart wrenching, and actions must be taken to stop this cycle of violence. Those responsible for these attacks -- including those who engaged in financial sponsorship, military planning or direct aid to Hamas -- should, in my opinion, be found, arrested, prosecuted and subject to the fullest repercussions of the courts, including being sentenced to death if that is the court's decision. Those who are currently siding with Hamas are siding with terrorism, plain and simple. They should be loudly and repeatedly condemned. Simultaneously, out of a sense of humanity and compassion for fellow human beings, I must condemn Israel's actions of targeting over two million Palestinian civilians with siege warfare tactics that even the United Nations condemns as war crimes. Israel has cut off the water, food, electricity and fuel supply to the Gaza Strip. Gaza's last power plant has run out of fuel, and hospitals have no running water. Israel bombed the Gaza exit route into Egypt, making it impossible for Gaza citizens to flee. Meanwhile, relentless bombardment by the IDF has resulted in the complete destruction of an ever-growing list of residential buildings, taking their inhabitants with them, resulting in at least 140 Palestinian children now killed by Israel's retaliatory actions. Over 1.5 million women and children are now essentially trapped in Gaza, with no escape, as Israel's pronouncements (by Gallant, Netanyahu, and others) make it clear that Gaza will be "turned to rubble" and that war will be waged against the Palestinian populations "without restrictions" and with no regard for any rules of war that have been recognized across millennia (such as sparing women and children during your military campaigns).

Israel clearly intends to carry out an ethnic cleansing operation across Gaza

It is very clear from the words of Israeli leaders that the IDF intends to launch a ground war assault on Gaza and that during that war, many IDF soldiers will indiscriminately execute Palestinians on sight, and will do so out of a sense of vengeance, fueled by anger and operating completely outside any otherwise recognized rules of law or war. Many conservatives across the western world are caught up in the bloodlust and openly condoning ethnic cleansing operations in Gaza. For example, I have witnessed Citizen Free Press, a conservative news aggregation website, call to, "Kill the whole family" when linking to a headline about an IDF bombing of a Hamas leader's home, which killed his granddaughter. While I fully understand striking the home of a Hamas leader, the idea that we should also celebrate taking out an entire family -- including a young woman -- is abhorrent and contradicts core Christian values of honoring innocent human life. Similarly, US Sen. Marco Rubio, when asked about what should be done about the Palestinian people in Gaza while trying to root out Hamas, said, "You can’t coexist. They have to be eradicated." His comment was clearly directed toward the Palestinian people. The ethnic group, not merely Hamas. People like Sen. Rubio, whipped into an irrational fervor of hatred by the media, make no distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people. This would be like claiming that all white people are KKK, or that all black people are BLM, or that all Hispanic people are MS-13. It is absurd. And it is a very dangerous line of thinking that only leads to violence and human suffering. Make no mistake: Those who call themselves "conservatives" who are now calling for genocide against the Palestinian people are not conservatives at all. They are tyrants and would-be murderers who merely wear the conservative label to pretend that they have pro-humanity principles.

Israel promises that all of Gaza will be transformed into a POW camp

After this "cleansing" of Gaza, Israel plans to permanently occupy and police the entire region, ending Gaza's "self rule" and permanently denying the Palestinian civilians any voice or representation in their own government. Flatly stated, Israel plans to transform Gaza into a POW camp where Palestinians are essentially prisoners of war, with no human rights, no voice and no democracy. They would exist only at the whim of a militarized nation that largely seeks the complete destruction of the Palestinian people. Imagine being trapped in a prison where the prison guards openly want to murder you. This is the reality that 2+ million Palestinian civilians will soon be facing. The situation is so dire in Gaza today that relief doctors there have sent out an SOS to the world. Via ZeroHedge: Doctors in Gaza have sent out an "SOS message" to the world, saying that after four straight nights of the biggest Israeli air campaign in years (or perhaps history), all civil services including electricity, fuel and water are suffering collapse. Officials at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City have further claimed the Israelis are targeting first responders, as the death toll among Palestinians has soared passed 940, with at least 140 children among the dead. An estimated 263,000 Palestinians have been displaced thus far. A Gaza health official announced Wednesday, "We are suffering … and the world is not moving a finger. This is an SOS to the whole world… you must help us," and further confirmed Gaza’s sole power plant has run out of fuel. Israel had already cut all external electricity and water supply sources. Al Jazeera has cited its correspondent to say Gaza residents are "trapped in a cage" with nowhere to exit amid the unrelenting Israeli airstrikes:

Gaza has been completely locked up by Israel, and it was already in a deteriorating humanitarian condition for many years because of a long-lasting blockade. But these five days have been extraordinary. A complete blockade, no power, no water, no food supply, no medical supply and on top of all of that, continuous bombardment. All supplies are running out since there are no open emergency or humanitarian corridors for any kind of aid to enter the Gaza Strip. The people are trapped in a cage with no access to help from the outside.

Notably, when Russia achieved missile strikes against Ukrainian electrical infrastructure, causing temporary blackouts across several cities, EU president Ursula von der Leyen declared the following: Russia's attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes. Cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity and heating with winter coming - these are acts of pure terror.

But of course when Israel does it to Palestinians, suddenly it's not a war crime. Suddenly it's perfectly acceptable to the EU, NATO, USA and other western countries. It's "war crimes" when Russia does it, but never when Israel does it.

It is not "anti-Semitic" to condemn the slaughter of innocent civilians

In covering this issue, I have already heard numerous claims that anyone speaking out against Israeli actions -- no matter how illegal or barbaric they may be -- makes you an "anti-Semite." This is a disingenuous argument, and it is thrown around as an attempt to shield Israel from reasoned criticism about its tactics and end goals involving 2+ million Palestinian civilians, the vast majority of whom are not Hamas and took no part in the Hamas terror attacks on Israel. Surely Israel, if it is to maintain the support of the so-called "international community," must conduct itself with a sense of humanity for innocents, and within rules of war that we are told define "modern liberal democracies." If Israel acts in a barbaric manner with utter disregard for the women, children, elderly and sick who are caught in the crossfire, then Israel forfeits its moral high ground and merely confirms that the disgusting tactics of Hamas are, indeed, acceptable to use against your enemies if you are angry enough. I may be one of the few voices saying this, but your anger does not exempt you from acting within the rules of war. Those rules include, of course, accepting the surrender of enemies rather than executing them when they attempt to surrender. It includes sparing women and children from your attacks and avoiding the use of weapons of mass destruction or other indiscriminate weapons that destroy the lives of those who are not part of this war and who took no part in the attacks on Israel in the first place. By every international reckoning, the cutting off of food, water, electricity and fuel to 2+ million Palestinians in Gaza is a war crime. It is not consistent with occupying any moral high ground, nor with the principles we are told represent "liberal democracies."

Justifying the mass killing of civilians in order to "get Hamas"

Disturbingly, I have also been told by numerous people that "because Hamas is hiding among the civilians in Gaza, it is okay for Israel to kill those civilians if necessary to destroy Hamas." Consider this twisted reasoning for a moment. Consider the implications if other nations decide the same rules apply to Israel. What if Iran decides that because anti-Iranian resistance groups are hiding among Israelis in Tel Aviv, then it is therefore justifiable to nuke the entire city in order to take out the militants hiding among the civilians. By this logic, every nation with weapons of war can justify slaughtering civilians of any other nation -- even in large numbers -- merely by claiming some smaller number of militants, extremists or terrorists are hiding out among them. Similarly, the US government could declare that because "extremists" are hiding somewhere in your town, the US military has the right to bomb your entire town into rubble. This is precisely the argument that many Israelis are making right now. Such a notion is surely a path that leads to untold human suffering and the plunging of our nations into a spiral of world war. This idea that, essentially, "because Hamas is so evil therefore we can be ruthless and lawless as well" only leads to yet more human suffering in the long run, including suffering among Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians and many more who may become ensnared in this widening conflict. Should Israel make good on its threats to turn Gaza into rubble, even as millions of Palestinians are trapped there, Israel will be the architect of unprecedented human suffering and loss of life on a scale that is truly Biblical. Even worse, in taking such actions, Israel will demonstrate that it is no more "civilized" than the Hamas terrorists who murdered innocent Israeli civilians. How many dead Palestinians will it take for Israel to quench its bloodlust and feel that it has sufficiently avenged the deaths of 1,200+ Israelis? Will 100,000 dead Palestinians suffice? Or is the number 500,000? If you talk to Israelis right now, many of them are saying that not one Palestinian should be left alive. That is a call for genocide, by definition. It smacks of an ethnic cleansing campaign to rid the world of an entire ethnicity of people, justified by claiming they are sub-human animals who don't deserve to exist on this planet. This twisted, evil logic has been invoked before, of course. Most notably it was invoked against people of Jewish ethnicity, resulting in six million of them being systematically slaughtered by the Third Reich. The arguments of the Third Reich in 1939 now appear almost identical to Israel's arguments against Palestinian civilians today. They sound like this: "They are animals. They are sub-human. They must be exterminated. They cannot be allowed to exist. They are inferior." The rage echoes across time and reminds us that if we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. When fighting monsters, beware that you do not become one yourself. Killing women, children and civilians is always wrong. Even if someone else did it to your people first. Vengeance leads to a spiral of violence, as each round of deaths ultimately recruits more people to the idea that they must avenge those deaths by killing even more innocents on the other side. Bombs are launched. Rockets fly. Suicide vests are detonated. Water supplies are cut off. Larger enemies take notice, and sooner or later somebody reaches for a nuclear artillery round that levels a few square miles in a radiation mushroom cloud. And then we find ourselves dying among the radioactive dust, but somehow feeling righteous in saying, "We sure made them PAY for that, didn't we?" If Israel pursues its present course of action against millions of Palestinian civilians, then we will all surely pay a steep price for years to come, in loss of life, skyrocketing oil prices, broken economies, supply chain destruction and ultimately billions of lives destroyed or even snuffed out. For anyone willing to extract that price in order to appease your own rage, I would argue that it is you who are the animal, not merely Hamas. If we hope to survive all this, we must do so by embracing our humanity, not our inner Beast. I pray for the lives already lost. I pray for peace. And most importantly, I pray that humanity can reject that dictates of rage and find the presence of mind to pursue courses of action that de-escalate violence instead of multiplying it. That does not make me an anti-Semite. It makes me a compassionate human being.