Shit happens; China calls out US on spying
Netanyahu adopts a "shit happens" stance on aid worker killings in Gaza; China points finger at US spying
Israel reckons precision attack was an accident
Benjamin Netanyahu seems ready to burn all relationships other than the creeps from the Israeli right-wingers who back him and keep him clinging on to power by his fingernails. As if it weren’t enough to ignore Joe Biden, Netanyahu adopted what I can only think of as a “shit happens” response to the killing of aid workers in Gaza.
The hole in the roof of the “soft” (unarmoured) vehicle was the size of a basketball and the munition presumably all but incinerated all the occupants. Seven foreign aid workers were killed in the convoy targeted by an Israel Defence Force drone or drones.
“This happens in war,” Netanyahu said while describing the incident as “tragic” and pledging an investigation.
However a new expose of the IDF tactics in Gaza suggests that the strike on the World Central Kitchen team was more like business-as-usual with secret rules of engagement that permit the killing of civilians in pursuit of a Hamas target.
Israeli investigative journalists said the IDF was using an artificial intelligence-powered system that identified more than 37,000 human targets in Gaza and worked under rules setting a ratio of civilian deaths to Hamas guerrillas in decision-making.
The cynical pragmatism of the tactics in Gaza was laid bare: use cheap “dumb” bombs against relatively low-level targets in their homes, knowing civilians would die, and use AI to speed up decision-making even if a human made the final call.
“I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time,” The Guardian quoted one of the sources for the Israeli report as saying.
“You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people – it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],” The Guardian quoted an intelligence officer as saying. The report said there was a permitted ratio of 15-to-20 civilian deaths for each relatively low value Hamas target.
The full report on the +972 site is shocking reading and goes some way to explain the more than 30,000 deaths reported by the Hamas-run Gaza health authorities in Israel’s scorched earth response to the October 7 incursion and massacre.
It will be a sad but fitting irony if the deaths of foreign aid workers were to spark a turnaround in support for Israel internationally and a turn against Netanyahu at home. Israel has demonised the United Nations agency that specialises in aid for Palestinians, UNWRA, and much smaller organisations like World Central Kitchen are trying to fill the gap in food aid with fears of large scale starvation in Gaza.
WCK found, Washinton DC celebrity chef José Andrés, said he believed that the IDF deliberately targeted his people and sent sequential missiles at their clearly marked convoy despite the organisation having notified the IDF of its composition and route.
"This was not just a bad luck situation where ‘oops’ we dropped the bomb in the wrong place," Andrés told Reuters.
The Times reported that Israel made the strike with its deadly accurate “Spike” missiles fired from a Hermes 450 drone.
“It’s absolutely perfectly accurate,” The Times quoted Chris Lincoln-Jones, a former British Army major who has worked with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), as saying. “If you aim at the driver’s side, you will hit the driver full-on. If you were across the street from the car, you’d be shaken up and you might be hit by a few splinters, but you would survive.”
Go deeper on this subject
Benjamin Netanyahu Is Israel’s Worst Prime Minister Ever is an in-depth look at Netanyahu in The Atlantic by his most recent biographer Anshel Pfeffer who also writes for The Economist and The Times.
“No matter how the war in Gaza ends, what happens in its aftermath, or when Netanyahu’s term finally ends, the prime minister will forever be associated above all with that day and the disastrous war that followed. He will go down as the worst prime minister because he has been catastrophic for Israeli security,” Pfeffer wrote.
Saudi Arabia’s Israel strategy upended by anger over Gaza war, is an analysis in The Financial Times on the domestic and international pressures on Riyadh.
‘Now Saudi Arabia’s leaders worry about the threat posed by a prolonged conflict in Gaza to its chances of restarting that process, as well as to its ambitious plans for economic and social reform and the cohesion of the kingdom…Saudi officials have repeatedly called for a halt to the war and led Arab nations in accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza. They fear that the brutal images emerging from the shattered territory will radicalise their young population. as it tries to navigate the Gaza crisis,’ FT correspondent Ahmed Al Omran reported from Jeddah.
China calls out US spying after Five Eyes claims
There is a certain inevitability to the Chinese response to claims from the New Zealand government and its Five Eyes intelligence sharing allies that Beijing launched persistent hacking and spying attacks.
Yet there is chutzpah in the statement shared by China’s ambassador to Wellington. (I include this partly because a noted New Zealand expert on China last week suggested my question to her about US spying on China smacked of “whataboutism”.)
“They are typically acting like a thief who, driven by a guilty conscience, poses as a judge to distort facts. What they are attempting at is the politicization of cybersecurity and infringement of the legal rights of China,” the Chinese Ministry of State said in the statement the ambassador shared on social media.
“The US has been the biggest source of cyberattacks and biggest threat to the security of global cyberspace,” it said, adding: “At the same time, the US and the UK are speeding up the militarization of network on all aspects by taking frequent cyber military operations and further substantiating their 'preemptive' and 'cyber deterrence' strategy, posing a severe threat to the global cybersecurity.”
It likened the claims made by the US, New Zealand, and the UK, that China was engaged in cyberattacks against them to a “thief in a judge’s robe”.
In a sardonic note on X, former Prime Minister Helen Clark shared the Chinese statement: '“Just saying - spying and interception are generally not a one-way street….”
Ends/PGB - Do let me know if this hits the spot for you.
I am so grateful for Peter B, Robert P, Bernard H in this fraught existential crisis where attack/defence seems the primary or only mode considered. Without an alternative we are lost. At every level, in domestic and intl politics this combative mode has to be counterbalanced with ways of collaboration, and these are not mutually exclusive with reasonable defence and survival, and in fact are likely to ensure them. The AUKUS focus is primarily focussing on combat and defence, the Coalition main focus is competitive with its own citizens! for short term profits with long term negative consequences. It is overall childish. Where you have some, not all, lawyers, politicians(our defence min is both) and, 'pure capitalists' and bankers conditioned to fight and win, they can be untrusting of, or can't imagine, anything else. These people make the decisions, and need reconditioning, reward eg by intl accolade for finding mutually beneficial solutions, or seeing how they benefit from them eg re water, food, energy, health, climate, cyberbullying et al, in short a future for our younger generations rather than the mutual destruction we are arguably approaching otherwise. These decision makers also need negative reinforcement, eg by exposure, and demonstration of breach of International law.
The UN is flawed but must by us be hugely supported eg the largely respected ICJ, in its delivering a good clear professional determination when S Africa made an appeal re Gaza, as it links diverse geopolitical groups and helps create trust and resolution, and the Security Council is much better than nothing. Both are there ostensibly to support values of mutual respect and international law.
NZ could lead the way in creating this shift, addressing common challenges, as Jacinda has and does to a degree. The future could be much more exciting. A different dialogue could help undermine weaponisation of fear, so useful for nasty players, engender some trust at least, maybe even persuade Americans not to vote for Trump ..
Not sure how fast conditioning occurs,? food. Maybe reward Luxon and co with lobster each time they voice something large minded
Regarding the apparent discontent with Netenyahu as the leader of a vile country committing a cruel and brutal genocide, do you have any insight on how the Israeli citizenry feel about it? Also I’m a bit confused about the presumption that genocide Joe is frustrated with Bibi. Hasn’t he just sent an arms shipment of 2000 lb bombs, the most destructive of any, to further butcher what’s left of the Gazan people?
Do you think the msm media sources you use to underpin your article really have any credibility or are they engaging in propaganda cover for Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, bless their beautiful souls. From the river to the sea Palestine will be free.