Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant has announced a "complete siege" of all of Gaza in response to the Hamas attack on Saturday, justifying the deliberate targeting of civilians with siege warfare by the claim that Israel is at war with "human animals".

"I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed," Gallant said Monday, adding, "We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly."

So there you have it, folks: they're attacking civilians, which is fine, because they're not actually attacking human beings.

There it is. The true face of Israel, naked and unadorned in the cold light of day. The mask is completely off now.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The True Face Of Israel

The Israel-Palestine issue is not complicated; an apartheid regime abuses and oppresses an indigenous ethnic group who don't have the same rights as others. The only reason anyone thinks it's complicated is because they assume if it were simple, the news would've told them so.

Really Israel-Palestine is one of the easier conflicts to understand on the world stage; conflicts like Ukraine or Syria are much more complicated. It's obvious at a glance that there's one group in power and another group being treated very badly by that group, but because the press frames it as a complicated issue with its sympathies wildly slanted toward the apartheid regime, people assume it can't be as simple as what it looks like at first glance.

It is, though. Israel is exactly the abusive apartheid regime it looks like on the surface. Remember this as the bodies pile up and Gaza is turned into a smoldering crater. This is exactly what it looks like.

Reading by Tim Foley.

This Is Exactly What It Looks Like

People are going insane, in the same way they went insane after 9/11. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks there was this shrieking emotional intensity which saw critical thinking go out the window and saw people's minds consumed with a rabid lust for Muslim blood.

Reading by Tim Foley.

People Have A Serious Case Of 9/11 Brain, And It's Scary

It's interesting how last week Israel had no idea what Hamas was up to, and yet this week they know every mosque, school and hospital that Hamas is hiding in.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Israeli Intelligence Suddenly Knows Exactly Where Hamas Is

So be perfectly clear, the US government is fully behind this massacre, and is just as culpable for everything that happens in Gaza as the Israeli government. These abuses are being perpetrated using US weapons, US funding and US consent. Washington could end this mass atrocity with a word, and instead they're fully aligning themselves behind it. Israel's crimes in Gaza are not meaningfully separate from the crimes of the US war machine.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The US Is Just As Culpable As Israel For The Atrocities Committed In Gaza

Internet blackouts, the war on journalism, propaganda, influence operations, bans on demonstrations and online censorship are all happening for the same reason: to keep the public from forming a truth-based understanding of what's happening in Gaza. Because if the public did form a truth-based understanding of what's happening in Gaza, they wouldn't consent to what's happening there.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The World Is Being Blinded To What's Happening In Gaza

One of the most destructive ideas in modern times is this notion that it's fine and appropriate for governments to act like monsters whenever anything bad happens to their country. We saw it happen with the United States after 9/11, and we're seeing it now with Israel.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Insane Idea That Nations Get To Do War Crimes Whenever Something Bad Happens To Them

"But what I'd like to quickly document as things unfold is the highly unusual number of mass media reporters I've been seeing who haven't hesitated to point to Israel as the probable culprit."

Reading by Tim Foley.

Mass Media Reporters Aren't Buying Israel's Hospital Bombing Story

The western press have been finding themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to do reporting alongside the middle easterners they've been lying about for generations, and discovering that a lot of those middle easterners speak English and have a few things to say.

Reading by Tim Foley.

Middle Easterners Have Words For The Western Press Who've Been Lying About Them

The US-centralized empire is a giant network of allies, partners and assets spanning the entire globe. Many of the nations in this network, such as Israel, have strong ideologies and values systems that the empire must cooperate with to obtain their loyalty. But the empire itself has no ideology or values - it values nothing but planetary domination. The empire's motives are no more ideological than the motives of a mugger are ideological.

So the empire has no ideology, but it is held together by cooperation with individual governments who do. The problem this creates is that sometimes the ideologies of those states cause them to do things that go against the interests of the empire as a whole. Israel can just up and decide to commit a genocidal massacre in front of everyone. Saudi Arabia can decide it's going to dismember a Washington Post reporter with a bone saw. Proxies in Ukraine can keep saying Nazi things and sporting Nazi insignia in public. They do these things because unlike the top brass in the imperial power structure they are guided by ideology, with no regard for the need to preserve the empire's image as a "rules-based international order".

Reading by Tim Foley.

The US Empire's PR Crisis In Gaza

I used to be pro-Palestinian, you know. I thought Israel was wrong for carpet bombing Gaza and using siege warfare on civilians.

But then I ran into a very wise Israel apologist who changed my way of looking at things forever.

Reading by Tim Foley.

The Wise And Brilliant Israel Apologist

Readings of all Caitlin Johnstone's articles, usually by her co-writer Tim Foley.

The World Is Being Blinded To What's Happening In Gaza

Caitlin Johnstone

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